Computer Hardware and Software
Posts tagged Google
Have you made your decision to be a Mac or a PC?
May 31st
This is a video review of Mac versus Windows which shows both – the good and the bad – sides of PCs and Macs:
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Personally I made my decision to be a PC because I love to have control over every little part of the OS (using OpenBSD, Ubuntu Netbook Edition and various Windows).
What are you? (Mac, PC or both?) Please comment!
Update: Should colleges start giving Apple’s iPad to students?
May 22nd
This morning I wrote about all the discussions to the question Should colleges start giving Apple’s iPad to students?
But since this time there were many important news-releases surrounding the Apple iPad.
For example data now points that the iPad has become (or always was, given its short life thus far) so popular that it is on the right track to outsell the venerable Mac, Apple’s regular computing line. According to an analyst Apple is selling some 200,000 iPads a week, versus a mere 110,000 Macs in the same time frame.
The iPad is of course a new product, and slower sales are to be expected once the full global roll out has been completed and enough time has passed to fill initial demand. That will take weeks, if not months. At 200,000 a week, Apple will have moved at least another million iPads.
The shocking statistic that has the tech world in an uproar is that some 20% (1 in 5) Americans is either “likely” or “somewhat likely” to purchase an iPad. The population of the United States is roughly 300 million, 20% of that number works out to some 60 million. If Apple sold that many iPads at the lowest price point possible, $500, it would bring in some 30 billion USD in revenue.
Seeing those data, people start to think, if maybe the Apple iPad is going to get a mainstream device and draw in a huge amount of PC users not using apple products yet. For sure other manufacturers will be really unhappy with Apple and since they don’t want to loose all of their clients to the Mac or iPhone/iPad, they have to adopt Apple’s new standards and also be sort of nice to them…
I guess this will end in a really huge showdown between Microsoft and Apple. But then there is another question: What about all the other big technology companies like Google, HP/Dell, HTC, and so on. For sure these companies all have their reasons to like neither Apple nor Microsoft but they will have to decide very soon! Or maybe it will go bad for both Microsoft and Apple as you see Google working on their ChromeOS and HP hugging WebOS.
No matter what happens, it is going to “take a bloody end”. I just hope that customers won’t have to suffer too much.
PS: take a look at how I tagged this post..
New Hotmail design and impressive upgrades!
May 18th
It’s official! Microsoft have just announced that Hotmail is getting a new design and some impressive upgrades!
Wow! Go to the preview website, and also read the announcement, this is good stuff. Hurry up and launch the new Hotmail please! Best of all, Hotmail will now be fully integrated with SkyDrive! This will be really useful. Every time I send or download an attachment in a Hotmail email, I feel there should be a SkyDrive button to go with it.
SkyDrive is rapidly becoming by far the most useful online storage facility, thanks to the new Hotmail, the new Office Live, and of course Office 2010 — all of which are integrated with SkyDrive and able to use this as their file storage system. SkyDrive is becoming my new hard drive – it has everything! (MS’s domination of the market with MS Office gives them an advantage that Google can only dream of. Google are planning to integrate their web-based office apps with their web-based storage, but they have taken too long, and besides the number of people using Google’s desktop publishing apps is negligible compared to MS Office and Windows.)
Here’s my wish-list of the features I want added to SkyDrive… If MS can give us these features, it would make SkyDrive absolutely perfect!
- The ability to upload bigger files (up to 5 GB would be nice)
- The ability to link directly to files on SkyDrive (by providing a permanent URL for a file on SkyDrive)
- A public API for SkyDrive (in fact, there already is an API, but we need it to be made public please!)
Google to begin indexing the internet in real-time?
Mar 4th
In a move that might rewrite the entire search market, Google is rumored to be creating a system that will let allow web publishers to submit content to Google for search indexing in real-time.
This of course follows the introduction of PubSubHubBub by Google, a tool to move syndicated content in real-time to aggregators. PubSubHubBub has become a hit among publishers looking to get their information into the market as quickly as possible.
This move by Google, if it comes to fruition, would be a super-PubSubHubBub, not just moving your content into Google Reader at light speed, but also into the hands of the tens of millions of people searching Google every few hours. It would be a bigger move towards a real-time web than Twitter will ever be.
Of course, this would give Google a strong leg up on Bing, and would tie internet publishers even tighter to the internet giant. Many already depend on Google Analytics and Feedburner in their publications Now with PubSubHubBub and the new tool, publishers not working on a Google platform would still be using Google tools to publish.
Is there no corner of the world where Google will not expand into?
Sure to be lost in any discussion are the internet searchers, who will benefit greatly from having the best data in real-time, all the time. Who loses? Microsoft, and any publisher not smart enough to jump on board.
Marshall Kirkpatrick has an excellent discussion of the technical aspects of the project, which we recommend that you read if you are a publisher.
When will this come out? We are not sure at the moment, but when it does, the earthquakes we resonate in search for years to come.
5 ways Bing is better than Google
Feb 28th
With Google’s unchecked domination of the Search business, it’s sometimes tough to remember that there are viable alternatives out there.
Indeed, Google currently controls a commanding 72% of the search market, according to Experian Hitwise. However, the search market is seeing an interesting shift right now, as Yahoo continues to lose ground to Bing. With the recent US and EU approval of a search deal between Yahoo and Bing, it appears that the search market will soon become a two horse race between Google and Bing.
Bing has taken the fight to Google, and amazingly, Bing has Google beaten in a few big areas. Read the rest of this entry »
Fun with Youtube!
Feb 23rd
No, this is not Photoshopped! Take one more look at the picture..
YouTube. The potential for a little deviance here is obvious. (Hint: click the read more link below…)
using modified GMail-addresses
Feb 20th
Just about when I thought I got everything out of Gmail, I discovered my top favorite feature:
Let’s say that your email address is ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’, basically everything sent to any of the following email addresses will be forwarded to your primary email.
… |
… |
And that’s not all, you can place as many dots as you want, it can be even something like ‘G.e.o.r.g.e.B.u.s.h@gmail.com’ and you’ll still get it on ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’
Additionally, I just also found out that you can embed random text to your email ID using ‘+’ sign. That is to say ‘GeorgeBush+anythingyouwant@gmail.com’ can be used as your email address, as well.
Ok I got it. Now what ?
1. One email for every purpose
Instead of using different email addresses for various purposes (work, school, friends, etc.) you can use different variations of your Gmail and filter incoming mails by ’sent to’ address. For instance, all incoming mail sent to ‘Name.Surname@gmail.com’ can be put to folder ‘work’, messages sent to ‘NameSurname@gmail.com’ can be put to ‘friends’, ‘N.ameSurname@gmail.com’ can be used for newsletters, and so on.
2. Track/Block spammers
When signing up for some website, say thatwebsite.com, you can add thatwebsite to your Gmail user ID (eg. GeorgeBush+thatwebsite@gmail.com). This way you can block your subscription whenever you want and even identify those websites that distribute your email address to spammers.
Download free ebook : Cloud Computing
Jan 19th
Cloud computing has been latest buzz in the way storage and services are provided. Many IT giants like Google, Microsoft are working in development of Cloud Services. While Google has been working with Chromium OS, Microsoft has plans with Windows Azure. To make IT-Pros & Users more familiar about cloud computing MS has released a free ebook on Cloud Computing.
An industry shift towards cloud computing discuss basics of cloud computing, importance of it from business point of view, technology related & Much more. This half a MB ebook can be downloaded from here : Ebook Cloud-Computing
Google Chromium OS source code published!
Dec 15th
Google Chrome OS is now open sourced as “Chromium OS”. This means code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. Chromium OS project includes current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development, Google.
- It’s all about web. All apps are web apps. Entire experience takes place within browser and there’re no conventional desktop app, means users don’t have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.
- Second, because all apps live within browser, there’re significant benefits to security. Chrome OS doesn’t trust apps you run. Each app’s contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Chrome OS Security Overview.
- Chrome OS is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian that uses a lot of open-source software: Host AP Linux drivers, PAM (an authentication mechanism), Syslinux (a lightweight bootloader), IBus (Intelligent Input Bus for Linux / Unix OS), ConnMan (Internet connection manager), XScreenSaver and other software.
- Also Google announced, it’s OS will be ready for consumers this time next year. Sign up here for updates or if you like building your operating system from source. Or just come back to this weblog from time to time to get news about Chrome OS!
Here are 3 Videos that give you basic information about the Operating System: