Wired Geeks

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

y new product from Google was bound to have a lot of interest in it so for a few months we were obsessed with Wave trying to see what it can do and what it could/would be used for. Invites were rare and coveted defeating the entire point of the service which was to collaborate/share/communicate. Early users like me found that not many people I knew had been able to sign up for the service and so could not give it a chance. The problem this time was that Google did not make Wave because there was demand for the product in the market. This was something new. Well, not quite. The concepts already exist in the form of forums and email groups. Google basically reinvented the forum albeit with less features like quoting, subforums, moderation and added scripting and bots and gadgets. When I first tried out the service I found it confusing, cluttered and lacking in any specific purpose. Sure, you could embed videos and media and things and make it a colourful and interesting visual experience but would you really use Wave for this over a social network? Do you really see yourself and your friend/contacts doing stuff like what you see in the Wave ads?
I always thought that Wave wasn’t unique enough. It felt like an AJAXified forum with a lot of multimedia features and that simply wasn’t interesting/useful enough right now. If some of these features move into social networking sites and emails I would welcome it but using Google Wave as an application is just too vague a concept.
Now all the interest has died away and you see no more mention of it anywhere. Let us leave it to die a dignified death from disuse and work on something else.

GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007, relaunched as Google Voice way back in March. It’s still technically in private beta, but invitations aren’t all that hard to find. From what we’ve heard, Google is very seriously planning to add a version of the Google Voice product to its Apps/Office suite of applications for businesses. Currently, businesses are offered enterprise versions of Google Docs (online Office), Gmail, calendar and other applications. More than 2 million businesses and 20 million people use Google Apps. Google Voice gives users a phone number that they can then redirect to any phone – mobile, landline, VoIP, etc. My Google Voice number rings my home Vonage line and multiple mobile phones simultaneously. And the Android Google Voice application effectively takes over the phone for all outbound calls and text messages, too. The consumer service will supposedly launch publicly sometime early next year. But an enterprise version, which will act as a virtual phone system for small businesses, may come soon after. Small businesses currently have a variety of choices for their phone system. Regular phone service is just one of those options. Services like Ring Central, which is funded by Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and DAG Ventures, offers a robust virtual phone system for businesses. Pricing ranges from $50/month. Vonage and others also offer business-focused products.There’s no reason for Google not to enter the enterprise phone business. There’s lots of potential revenue there from tens of millions of small businesses. And they are already selling Google Apps into those businesses.

Earlier today, we wrote about Google forgoing its usual holiday gifts to its ad partners and instead giving $20 million to a group of charities. Now it looks like Facebook is doing something similar. In an email sent out to various friends and members of the press, Facebook’s Communications and Policy team notes that rather than having a holiday party this year, it is giving out $25 virtual tokens that you can use for a donation. Here’s what the message says, “In lieu of a party this season, we are making a $25 donation on your behalf to U.S. classrooms in need. Please go to DonorsChoose.org, enter the code in the token above, and select a project to support.” Again, a nice gesture from a one of the big Silicon Valley players. And certainly better than yet another holiday party (there is seriously one just about every night out here right now).

Each year, Google sends out gifts to its users of its AdSense and AdWords products. Typically, these gifts are only given to the “high-rollers” on each in early December. But this year, these gifts were nowhere to be found, and it appears that today has revealed the reason. It looks like Google has sent out a message to all AdSense and AdWords partners letting them know that they’ve decided to do “something a little different this year.” Clicking on the link in the email takes you to a page letting you know that Google is giving $20 million to a group of charity as its holiday gift to everyone this year. Specifically, the website reads, “This gift is for someone very special: Everyone. Because charities are experiencing their toughest year in decades, we have committed $20 million to helping those who help us all. Our gift to you is a gift to them. Happy Holidays.” It then goes on to list the 25 charities that Google has chosen as “intended recipients.” These include: Boys and Girls Clubs, Feeding America, Smile Train, HEAL Africa, Loud Against Nazis, Reporters Without Borders, and many others. It’s not entirely clear if this gift will fully replace the Google swag that they have sent out the past several years, and everyone quickly posts to the Internet. Last year, Google sent out some, but it mostly cancelled the gifts due to the bad economic climate. This year, it looks like they’ve taken a higher road. Google also had a holiday to all its users this year: Free WiFi in airports and some airplanes around the country.

A number of pictures have hit the web now showing the Nexus One, aka the Google Phone, in the flesh. But there haven’t been too many showing its packaging, and it getting unboxed. Today, some Twitpics shared by one user show those. As a bonus, he also shows off a bit of its HTC-innards, and even shared a nice little video of the device in action. The Nexus One is expected to be released early next year sold both unlocked from Google and in partnership with at least one major carrier. Plenty of Googlers already have the device and have been going around all over the country showing it off. There was previously a video of it booting up, but apparently Google made the YouTube user take it down.

Most of us take them for granted, but web designers have to deal with a myriad of frustrating problems on a daily basis. From browsers that ignore standards to different screen resolutions, there’s a lot for them to grapple with. Today, Google has launched a new addition to its collection of Labs tools called Browser Size that’s meant to help alleivate one of these headaches.

One issue web designers face is ensuring that they keep their important content “above the fold” — you don’t want users to have to scroll down to see the hottest story or a call to action. Browser Size helps with this, by visualizing just what percentage of the Internet-browsing population can see a certain part of your page. This is related not only to screen resolution, but also how large people keep their browser windows.

Using the tool is simple: type a URL in at the top of the screen, and the site will load your webpage in the background. It will then overlay a semi-transparent graphic depicting how much of the web’s population can view each section of your page without scrolling. The results aren’t particularly exciting — the further down or to the side you go, the fewer people can see it. But this will certainly be helpful for web designers. The data is generated based on the browser size of users who visit Google.com. Google says that it found that the install rate for Google Earth increased by a whopping 10% simply by moving it 100 pixels higher on the page.

Google is really serious about using offline media to push its Web browser. After running ads for Google Chrome in the UK, it has today started a similar campaign in The Netherlands, too. Like in the UK, we’re getting reports on billboards appearing all over the country in combination with digital advertising appearing on Facebook and other sites.

Also like in the UK, Google is distributing its message through Metro, a free daily that can be picked up in many public places all over the country. You can access the online version of the newspaper right here, and you’ll see the front and back cover ad when you click through to the Issuu-powered digital edition.

Dutch Twitter users are busy posting images of the ads on TwitPic (here and here), with a hat tip to Alex van Herwijnen giving us a heads up.

According to Wikipedia (Dutch), Metro in The Netherlands gets printed on 530,000 copies every weekday morning on average and boasts a reach of nearly 2 million readers.

Will these efforts help increase Google Chrome’s market share in The Netherlands and the UK, you think?

Any other European countries where these billboard and newspaper ads have been spotted?

Bing market share has increased to 10% of all the searches.Google is still at the top but Bing is coming with exciting new features. Bing recently launched Microsoft visual search which is based on Silverlight technology.It enable user to search using visual images.Google is also not behind.It has integrated google book search in it main search engine.I used bing for few of my business registration searches and found the result to be satisfactory. It good that Microsoft is taking search business so seriously. If google was the lone player it wouldn’t be good for consumer. Google is launching its new caffeine search engine soon.Recently in one of the blog I read the result offered by caffeine and google are same for search query.If you are still undecided which search engine to use I will suggest try both.Both the search engine have their benefits.

Recently, i thought of buying a new scanner as my old scanner is troubling me a lot and it is really a headache for me.. I decided to search in the net for some best online store offering a best quality scanner. After a while i came across a site called Docketport.net, which is one of the best online store recommending us a DocketPort 685 scanner. This scanner is designed with a advanced duplex technology.with a resolution of about 600 DPI which gives us a very good clarity and picture. As this scanner has a duplex technology which is capable of scanning both sides of page in just one scan, this feature is really useful as it makes our our work easy. Everyone using this scanner will really be happy and pleased as they can scan ID cards, business card, insurance cards and other receipts and embossed cards with ease.. It just works with a standard USB connection and it does not need any adapter which makes us comfortable. This scanner is really a lightweight of about 10.6 oz and it is easy to carry it out easily.This scanner just cost $309.and the Medic Scan OCR comes around $939. Medic scan OCR is a software capable of converting scanned data & image to a file. For further details visit the site and take home your DocketPort 685 scanner.

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