Search results matching tag 'google'

Battle of 2 Cultures: Microsoft vs. Google

royce64ever — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Although there’s always been criticism about MS being greedy, still MS products are cornering the market. Windows, like a satellite launching tower, is leading and bringing people to the internet world. And there, people will meet Google sooner or later. And Google brings together all kinds of novelties fascinating and surprising people.

Google is free but MS charges, which we could say that Google is civilian and MS is hegemonic. So when Google is impacting MS by launching another and yet another new application, people are cheered and applauding for their civilian hero.

However, after the applause, they go back to their MS products. They still use their MS OS, MS Office, MS Outlook and MS MSN. A few IT elites, mostly technical elites, might be still using Google’s apps, Gtalk, Earth, etc.

So, Google products get applause from MS users; however, except for its search engine, we could hardly see its deep reach in commoners. The collision of Google Chrome OS and MS Windows 7 may be the same old story: applause is applause; then we still use what we use.

From the product angle, MS products are actually civilian: following and learning from MAC OS till XP gradually taking on a distinctive style and satisfying customers. Google stuffs are inexpensive and with powerful functions and great originality, but also reflecting the laziness of those Silicon Valley geniuses: plain, not fashionable, and precarious sometimes.

Therefore, we could say the conflict of Google and MS is the conflict of engineer and salesman. The former is deep inside a world of technique and function; the latter is all about business: satisfy customers’ habit maximally.

The appearance of Netbook leaves some kind of space to engineer culture: Netbook itself is a contracted laptop at the sacrifice of functions, like the subtraction from MS to Google products.

But Netbook is just a transition for now. When Apple’s Netbook appears, people would realize that “this is what we seek”!

Google has Android taking over the mobile terminal, but their internal competition strategy brought out Chrome. So the hardware manufacturers get sacred: what if there is something new of Google coming next year? Google never did promise anything to the manufacturers but MS did, which might make them think: more money or tossing around?

History has proved that it might not be a good idea to reduce the retail price of manufacturers. Earlier, PC manufacturers bundled Linux trying to reduce the price. But the market showed no interest to the low price. Therefore, hardware manufacturers should understand that: customers need something useful, not just something cheap.

If hardware manufacturers have something useful and pretty, customers would love it. So, Apple stuffs are desirable, always.

Google & Journalism

royce64ever — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:33:00 GMT

Started by News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press then joined the “war” against Google. It was not that surprised because Record Industry also had such issue before.

All the conflicts eventually came down to one: who is responsible for feeding a moribund industry? Or we could say “Is Henry Fort responsible for the decline of cab service?”

Well, it seems that it’s quite reasonable that journalism got p****d off: Google indexed our content, so you see, our ad revenue keeps declining while Google’s revenue gaining. Its Google took away the money that belongs to us! Google responds, if you do not want your content got indexed, easy! Just add a few lines of code to your robots.txt. But but but, Murdoch would never do that! He wants both the traffic and income of Google. So what he really meant was Google, as the biggest internet firm, has the responsibility to feed the moribund journalism.

But WTF?! How come that its Google’s mistake if the journalism was unable to keep pace with times?!

All doing the journalism, but I never heard TechCrunch or Read/Write Web blaming Google for that. It’s true that internet has destroyed many used-to-be stable business structures, meanwhile, brought up quite a few new business structures. Some people just keep their eyes on Google, rather than focus on how to gain more users holding the mouse! If the non-commercial Wiki could develop so well, then I could only say something just deserves death.

I don’t think we won’t have music to listen to if the Record Industry were dead; or we won’t have news to watch if newspaper were gone! If they just could not survive in the digital age or keep imputing all faults and wrongs on others, then just let them die.

It’s not that awful if traditional journalism were dead, because its death would set apart more opportunities. The strong always succeeds; the weakest goes to the wall.

G1 Review

root — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:59:00 GMT

Saturday root got the G1 phone. Within 24 hours, the geek had conquered the phone. Here is his review:

For those of you that don't know what the G1 is, it's Google's new phone that has the new Android OS (uses a Linux Kernal). It has a flip out keyboard but also a touch screen and a track ball. 1G SD, expandable to ~~8GB~~ <EDIT> 16GB now </EDIT>. Wifi, 3G/2G, GPS, and Bluetooth. Music player, google's browser (Chrome) for on the go websurfing (not to be confused with mobile spefic sites--this is a real browser), Youtube, POP/IMAP email client, Pictures, 3 megapixel camera, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and the ability to sync to all your google account features (Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Gtalk)

So let's get right into.

What's worth mentioning:

Market Place. Android OS means it's open for developers to create apps/games. It's open to all, and with just a 25$ fee for the developers to get into the market place--a built in app that lists all the apps available to the phone--you can see the value straight away. Every day I check the market place and find 3-5 new apps out there. The developers to these apps are also constantly improving their programs with the feedback given to them by their users. This is very much like any Linux package manager but it takes it one step further with feedback directly to the developer. Bugs/Feature requests are heard, and new releases come out relatively frequently (depending on the developer really).
Apps. There are some truly great, innovative apps out there. Just to name a few: With ShopSavvy you can scan a barcode (taking a picture of it), use your GPS, and find the nearest/cheapest place to buy that product. Parkmark allows you to mark where your car is via GPS and later, after a long day's of shopping, find it again using a radar like screen or a google map. Maps, G1's built in google maps gives you realtime view of where you are at with GPS and directions to where you are going--or the ability to search around you for restraunts/shops while you are walking around. Brain Genius Deluxe, like the nintindo DS's brain age. ConnectBot, a putty-like application allows you to ssh into a server/switch/computer. Dial 0, a huge database of businesses and the automatic shortcut to getting to a human being immediately. Budget Droid, for on the go budgeting. Power Manager, sets rules as to what your settings are (brightness, wifi/3G/2G/bluetooth/GPS/etc) based on how much battery life you have left--allowing you to get the most out of your battery. Locale, which sets up rules based on your location and time of day as to when your phone is on vibrate/silent, or who/when can get your phone to ring (wife calling during a meeting vs your friend or 'that guy'). And of course, imeem, a free internet radio service (a second cousin to pandora)
Desktop. The desktop has three screens: Left, Middle, Right. This lets you organize icons--or shortcuts--easily or supply widgets. But of course, you can always pull up the master list of apps.
Search. It's what google does best, and they have a specific key for it on the keyboard. Touch it and it uses contextual searching (if you are in the market place, it will search apps, if you are in the gmail app, it will search your emails, etc)
Unlock pattern. 9 balls in a square matrix that is the security screen to get in. While optional, very cool to use and very annoying on the gf.
Track Ball. After a while of using the touch screen/keyboard, you learn to use the trackball as well--which is great for when you are browsing. Very similar to being your mouse.
2G. While slower than 3G, it is nice to have the option to only use 2G. Why? Well to conserve battery life.
6 in memory. This is both a pro/con--but more so pro for me. How Andriod is built is that it keeps the last 6 programs you've opened in memory. The 7th one (And beyond) get closed. Holding down the home button, you can do an alt+tab to any of the last 6 you openned. This is both good and bad. Great idea (your phone will run consistantly at the same level performance wise), but you don't have the option to specify certain apps being persistant and not allowed to close--like IM. I use Gtalk, AIM and Yahoo Messenger. Only Gtalk is always on. If the IM application becomes 7 programs old, it will automatically close it and log you off of AIM/Yahoo. Thankfully I have a laptop that I use for most of my chatting and only when I'm out and about do I log onto the IM program... and Gtalk is always on... but it's still annoying to not have the option for persistent or being able to close a program (always on until 7th one).

What's not great:

Keyboard. Don't get me wrong, it's good. It's just that I'd like to have the option of having a soft keyboard. There are a few apps out there that can do it, but none are as asthetically pleasing or as good as the iphone/storm.
Tilt. All the apps that come standard with the G1 (i.e. google's apps), do not tilt when you turn it sideways... only if you open up the keyboard will it go into landscape mode. Now I have seen many apps out there made by the developers that will go into landscape mode when tilted, even without the keyboard showing. So we know the hardware is there, it's just getting them to code it in--or at least giving us the option.
No ActiveSync. For the corporate citizens, this is a major downer.
Touchscreen. Sometimes it doesn't recognize my input. It's not enough to get me frustrated, but it happens enough to have it mentioned here. Mostly happens in the browser with the small links and on the edges of the menu screen.
Built in Storage. I'm a KDE kinda guy, I like a lot of applications. Unfortunately,at this time, you can only store the apps on the internal built-in storage, not the 1GB SD card. SD card you can upgrade, just not the internal space. There is the option of jailbreaking it (post RC30), but for the layman that's difficult.
Location of the USB Charger. A small thing but when charging the phone, the wire is in the way of using the phone for internet use (keyboard) for me.
No 3.5mm Jack. You have to use the connector for charging the battery for the headset
No Multitouch. Yet.
Amazon, not iTunes. Which, really, if you don't have itunes music already, this isn't a big deal. Its just that for us iTunes people, who already have a lot of music already, can't play the encrypted drm stuff. Meaning we have to spend the time/money on burning CD's and copying them back to convert it into a non-DRM format. But I'd LOVE to be able to use iTunes, to be able to rent movies and watch it from my G1--but I know that wouldn't ever happen... and if it did, they'd require a wifi connection and that I wouldn't be able to dl it over the 3G network (amazon requires this when dl'ing music anyways).

Now most of the cons are software related issues that could be address in an upgrade or an app, but these hardware related issues is something that won't be fixed until G2 (or whatever the next version is) comes out. The greatest thing I love about this phone, though, is the apps and the developers. The applications you can use the apps for on the go is limitless. And since Google is marketing the Andriod to not just their product (G1) but to anyone that want's to use it as their OS (unlike windows or iphone's os). Now comparing this to iPhone would be silly. It has a long way to go from both a useability and style. But I will say this: In my mind, it's got windows by the balls.

Root's recommendation (strictly phone, not factoring in service): Not worth full price, but worth it if purchased with a contract (or second hand from a trusted, cheaper source). If you want customization and you are OK with banking on the future--with a limited budget for this type of phone--go for the G1. If you want something stylish, better storage, has better hardware (IMO), great for the simpleton, and you don't have a limit on the budget, go iPhone.

Blame Google for becoming stupid?!

royce64ever — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Google is ten years old now. If you ask is there anything else could change our existing concepts, culture, knowledge structure and business model profoundly within 10 years? It has to be Google. For anything that you do not know, just google it! Those show-off professors and scholars lost their pride when Google appeared, and those who earn money under information asymmetry found life won’t be that easy anymore in front of Google.

What we called learning was actually moving knowledge from one place to another, for example, from textbook to your brain, temporarily. You will need to remember with great effort in which year Watt invented the steam engine, which poet wrote “No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm” in which poem, how many structural formulas of benzene are there, and now, you can even easily google out a “perfect” graduation thesis to send away your teacher, but sure you’re gonna pray that your teacher won’t overthrow your schemes with Google just like you did.

Some people are worried about the “search engine addiction” of the younger generation. It’s interesting, every generation seemed worried about their next generation, not aware that they were also being worried by their parents some years ago. Actually, I have a similar question for those who have got used to and have been enjoying the modern civilization, are you electricity addicted? Can you live without electricity? I guess NO.

The specialists and scholars, however, are worried that Google is making us lose the ability to concentrate. A well-known critic Nicholas Carr has post an article Is Google Making Us Stupid? in The Atlantic.

“And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”

He thinks that if we depend on computer as the medium to understand the world, it would eventually become our mind. Carr’s article striked a chord with lots of readers, and surely a few argument. More and more people just can not settle down to read any article that is more than 1000 words, let alone a book.

In fact, I think what the scholars worried about is not losing the ability of concentration. (After all, Carr is writing his new book in earnest and analyzing whether Google really makes us stupid.) What Google really fears them is the subversive interpretation and reconstruction of existing knowledge and culture, which is one of the tasks accomplished by Internet. But what Google did was just reorganizing a large amount of existing information for people to get them more easily. Google never and will ever replace human brain to think.

Some people are stupid, but not due to depending on Google too much. They are still stupid if there is no Google. It’s because they have a brain but they never think. It's like an awful cook can pour the eggs into a pan and sprinkle salt; they can’t make a better dish than this even if there are more ingredients given to him. So I believe “stupidity is a defect of moral”, it has nothing to do with intelligence, and Google.

Google has been with us for 10 years, I can’t predict how it would be later on. For now, Google has done really great about eliminating monopoly in knowledge and popularizing knowledge.

Root's Workshop: Gmail

root — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:22:00 GMT

OK, so you have a gmail account but you want to utilize everything it has to offer.

Welcome to the Workshop.

Sit back and relax because this post is a long one... but how could I justify a post called "Workshop" if it wasn't long?

I've got a number of tricks that I use during my day-to-day email flurry that I feel compelled to share with the world... because that's how I balance the universe.

And I'm ~~cool~~ a nerd like that.

So where to start?

The first date, and first impressions.

Lets start with the Archive button.

OoooooOooo. Archive button. Push it. Push it!

But no, seriously. Use it. Something about emails in my inbox, whether read or unread, annoy me. Archiving emails will move it out of sight and out of mind. That's all. Google really doesn't believe in deleting emails (thus the infinite + 1 GB theory), although you can. But really, there is no need to. "Archive" and "Report Spam/Phishing" buttons are all you need.

Feel like you need to balance your own universe? Use the "Report Spam/Phishing" buttons. This will help Gmail know which emails, in other gmail user's inboxes, is spam. More you help them, the more you help me. Good job you.

I know many of you might not like labels, or don't use them at all and find them pointless, but in the long run they only help you. I personally use them if I know that I'm going to receive a lot of email from 1) a group of people or 2) a certain category of emails.... or 3) I want to flag certain emails as important (like bills).

Why use labels? Well for searching, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, how do you set up labels to work automatically? Let's face it, most of us are too lazy to mark emails, as they come in, under certain labels unless it is rare enough of a label (like the "Star" label).

Welcome to the second date, aka "Settings" area (top right of your screen).

...And welcome to Filters. Filters are ran automatically on emails coming in. Do you have a certain FROM email addresses that you know you'd like to label all emails (ex: support@eggxpert.com for all Eggxpert related forum reply emails)?

And while you are in the Settings area, you might find "Personal Level indicators". I like this feature because I can immediately know if an email in my inbox is sent directly to me or if it's part of a mass email and I'm just one of those lucky many who are on your "FWD" list.

You know who you are.

You can easily see this at a glance by looking at the > and >> symbols next to the subject line in your inbox.

Oooo, or the "Foward" feature where you can have multiple gmail accounts all forwarded to one email address... or better yet the "Send as" feature where from that one email account, not only can you receive mail from other accounts but also send email on behalf of those other accounts (instead of logging off and logging back on to that second of tenth account).

Another snazy feature is the keyboard shortcuts. Turn this sucker on and you can navigate almost anywhere in your Gmail account with just the keyboard (and it's fast when you get use to them). I won't list them all here, so just check out that link (or when you are in Gmail, hit the ? button).

I personally like the "m" shortcut. It "mutes" a conversation so it stays in the archive, even if someone continues to reply to you. *evil grin*

Let me guess, you already knew all these things because you are smart and can navigate the Settings place? Fine. FIne.

The infamous Third date.

Nervous?

Good.

Let's dig a little deeper into Gmail. Have you ever heard of tags? Sure you have. Tags for blogs. Tags for Youtube. Tags are the very 2.0 thing these days. Well Gmail, being a very 2.0 company, incorporated tags into it's email system... and no, I'm not talking about labels (although technically they could be called tags).

Say your email address is JohnSmith@gmail.com and you sign up ~~to playboy~~ a newsletter for the great articles. You being a savant in Gmail, you utilize a tag and sign up with the email address JohnSmith+FTGA@gmail.com.

What the gmail mail server will do, when it receives an email from this well established newsletter company, it will look at the address it sent it to, in this example: JohnSmith+FTGA. Well gmail is smart enough to know that your account is JohnSmith and anything after the + it will ignore as a tag, so it will forward on to you. What is so great about this? Well, with filters, you can actually (instead of specifying a FROM address) specify the TO address, for said well established newsletter and it's great articles with JohnSmith+FTGA@gmail.com

And hey, even better? You receive spam from MrHardOn@ezboy.au (gotta love those aussies) addressed to JohnSmith+FTGA. Hmmm, I wonder where they bought your email address from.

The only issue with tags is sometimes websites will not accept the + as a valid character when you type in your email address.

While tags are nice and all, the real inner beauty of Gmail is in it's Search. So let's focus more on that simple but powerful search bar. Say you automatically label, with your spiffy filters, emails coming in from BankofAmerica.com with a "BoA" label.

And for the sake of this example (and not that this has EVER happen to me), you had an issue with BoA way back when and you couldn't remember the person you had talked to... and the issue is being brought up again and they are claiming that they've never done (insert good customer service act) before. You're pretty sure it was three months ago, and say today is 4/1/2008

You being sway, you type into the Search field:

label:BoA before:2/1/2008 after:1/1/2008

How cool is that? You can also just drop off the "after" parameter if you aren't sure when you got it.... or the other way around, leave the after: parameter and drop the "before".

Oooo, or better yet, you just got back from vacation and have 1500 emails that you haven't opened yet (true story). So you have all these emails with labels, and most of the labels you know aren't important or you know certain labels that you want to see. For this example, lets say I wanted to check all new EggXpert threads that were posted in Storage. Because I subscribe to the storage category, I receive all replies to the storage thread.

I would probably type in the Search field:

label:EggX label:inbox label:unread "in Storage"

Notice the "inbox" and "unread" labels. That's right, almost everything is considered a label, even "trash" or "sent". The "in Storage" part is for the type of Eggxpert alerts. Because I know ALL emails coming from the Storage thread will say "Posted by username in Storage", I use the quote marks to make an exact search for "in Storage" -- note it isn't case sensitive.

Or say I vaguely remember an email from my mom a long time ago that had an attachment (can't remember what type of file it was) with phone numbers of all my kin (I know, I know, who uses the word kin these days?).

From:Mom@address.com has:attachment

Better yet, you can't remember if mom or dad sent it to you

From:Mom@address.com OR From:Dad@address.com has:attachment

The OR operator (has to be in caps) will find any emails from either mom or dad.

Now lets say you have a family Label but you know it wasn't sent by your brother but could have been by your parents/sister

label:Family -From:brother@address.com has:attachment

The - will exclude any results that fit that particular query. But say that you have too many search results and you know for certain that it was a .xls spreadsheet

label:Family -from:brother@address.com filename:xls

Or you know that inside the filename it says "contacts", but you don't know what type of filetype it is... and suppose you already added your brother in your contacts list and gave him the alias of "Ahole"

label:Family -from:Ahole filename:contacts

Let's change it up a bit. Let's say you are looking for an email from your friend Jack (whose email address is already in your contacts, and he is listed under "Playa") and he gave you directions to the movie theater near his new place along with this restaurant. Can't remember when he gave it to you but you are going to be visiting and you want to hit two birds with one stone--you bring your GF. You are pretty sure the subject said "Double date is double trouble". So you try this search

from:Playa subject:"Double date is double trouble"

It brings up a past email from him but it was his previous girl friend. Figures. But wait, you were almost certain it had the word "double" and "date" in the subject line... and know for a fact it mentioned his new girl friend in the body of the email. So you try this one:

from:Playa(Lindsy) subject:(double date)

This search looks for all messages from your friend Jack, with the word "Lindsy" anywhere in the email but it has to have the word "Double" AND "Date" in the subject line. And guess what? You found it: "I'm on a date with Lindsy's double shhh :-)"

You might have noticed the chat feature integrated with gmail. I use it all the time and guess what? You can search it too:

label:chat from:Playa Lindsy "white KF version"

You can also incorporate the tags into this for an added layer of search ability using the "to:" parameter... or "cc:" or "bc:" if you use those when sending mail.

Don't be a fool, wrap your tool.

Google is also pretty cool about being secure conscience. Two things I'd just like to mention. One is about getting your entire email (and chat *grin*) session into an encrypted session. This is done by logging into gmail via it's secured portal:

https://mail.google.com

Not only is your login secure (which is typical with http://mail.google.com or any of the links to gmail from Google's main site), but also your entire session with gmail (after the initial login). This means that from your laptop/computer to Google's email server, you are encrypted. This doesn't mean from Google to your destination is encrypted, mind you, but it's still snazy in my book.

The other neat 'security' thing I found is that Google doesn't forward on your IP address in it's headers when you send an email to someone. What does this mean? Well, no one can't figure out your geographical location, or ISP that you sent your email from. What some people don't know is that most email providers will forward on your IP address in the header. Why would they forward on your IP address? It's an easy way to know if an email was intercepted/rerouted/legit. Want to learn more about headers? Check this link out.

My only warning to you fine users is to not us Gmail as a Gdrive... not that I just gave you a keyword to use in Google to find programs to utilize Gmail as a storage drive. Granted, I'm guilty of occasionally use the "Save Now" feature to save notes to myself as a draft... or documents. But I would never use Gdrive for it is unreliable. Google could suspend your account or make modifications to their backend to render it useless. Too risky in my book. Save Now feature is good enough for me for unimportant stuff.

That's all for now. Hope you guys enjoy this Workshop. If I ever have the time, I'll get into Google Desktop as well as Google's search itself, which is a beast in it own right. If you guys would like to request a workshop from me, or a Classroom 101 post, or just a quick question, feel free to comment here or PM me.

Until the next Workshop,

Google/Yahoo/Microsoft

root — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:21:00 GMT

If you haven't heard, Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion USD.

Let me say that again.

[Dr. Evil voice]

44.6 BILLION dollars.

[/Dr. Evil voice]

Google being Google, they attempted to block MS's bid with an offer to Yahoo that, to me, is genius:

"Outsource your search to us, and you can focus more on your strong points... like social networking and mobile content."

The key points here:

1) Microsoft would consume Yahoo (and Yahoo's culture, employees, etc.) and potentially inherit Microsoft's culture and/or loose people.... and they wouldn't be independent anymore. But they would be extremely wealthy.

2) Siding with Google they could keep their independence and focus on their strengths... while giving their (once?) major competitor their search and increasing their business significantly. They could keep their independence though...

3) If Yahoo accepts any of the offers, then they would be accepting defeat.

Article

What do you guys think Yahoo should do?