If you want to surf the web and download/upload faster, while this isn’t going to be a revelation to anyone, you need to have Broadband Internet Service (such as a Cable, DSL or “T1 or T3″ connection). If you have telephone modem service, forget it Jack- you lose, you’ll never get fast internet speed ever, [...]
How does the next generation flat-screen video display developed by Canon and Toshiba differ from other emerging video technology? SED TV, (Surface-Conduction Electron-Emitter Display) born from the marriage of Canon and Toshiba’s SED Inc., was on display as a prototype at the recent CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. Actually, that’s a little backwards [...]
You might not see iPods on Paris runways, but electronics have undergone a transformation from a utilitarian necessity to a fashion accessory. While electronics aren’t exactly replacing jewelry as a status symbol - bling is still the thing - the types of gadgets a person can’t live without speaks volumes about his or her lifestyle.
Those [...]
Consumer Reports released a report which claims that LCD and Plasma TV’s require very few repairs within the first 3 years. Consumers who buy the extended warranties on Plasma or LCD TV’s this year will be wasting their money. It’s very unlikely that anything will happen within the first three years! Thats great news for [...]
If you are planning to buy a gadget as a gift for someone special or for yourself, then you need to employ certain guidelines in choosing the best. Receiving gadgets can be one of the coolest things yet choosing the right one for a person can mean a big difference. Also, with a lot of [...]
pspan class=”mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image” style=”display: inline;”img alt=”ds cooking guide.jpg” src=”http://uk.gizmodo.com/ds%20cooking%20guide.jpg” width=”286″ height=”313″ class=”mt-image-right” style=”float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;” //spanChristmas is coming and there’s not a stocking big enough to hold all the gadgets and tech on my hugely optimistic wish list but, Nintendo is hoping for a spot with new DS Christmas bundles. /p pThe company is quick off the mark, announcing 5 festive bundles that aim to part you from your cash. This is what you can expect from October 27th onwards./pimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://feeds.uk.gizmodo.com/c/552/f/9581/s/1ec62da/mf.gif’ border=’0′/div class=’mf-viral’table border=’0′trtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2.html?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/19/christmas_nintendo_ds_bundles.htmllink=Christmas Nintendo DS Bundles Revealed” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif” border=”0″ //a/tdtd valign=’middle’a href=”http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/09/19/christmas_nintendo_ds_bundles.htmllink=Christmas Nintendo DS Bundles Revealed” target=”_blank”img src=”http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/19345418498/f/9581/c/552/s/32269018/a2.htm”img src=”http://da.feedsportal.com/r/19345418498/f/9581/c/552/s/32269018/a2.img” border=”0″//a
How to take care of your video camera
When it comes to special occasions that need recording, a video camera will surely be one of the few items present inside the bag. In addition to the camera, a video camera is one of the mainstays of every special event in the family and with the Christmas [...]
Sure, with a $1 billion lawsuit hanging over its head concerning copyright issues on YouTube (even if Google is confident that it’s on the right side of the law), you might understand why Google would be a bit aggressive in its ramped up efforts to police content hosted on YouTube. However, should that aggressive effort apply to videos that aren’t public? Chris O’Donnell had posted a personal Christmas video of his family to YouTube using a couple of popular songs as background music — but he set the video to private, rather than public, and only sent it to a few family friends. A grand total of 3 or 4 people had seen the video. Yet, the video is now gone, as Google sent a notice saying that its automated content checker believed the video contained “unauthorized content.”
There’s clearly no way that the copyright holders in question would have complained about the video, as there was no way for them to see it. This wasn’t a public display or public performance of the content at all, and there may be some questions about fair use — which, as a court recently reminded folks, needs to be taken into account before DMCA takedowns are sent). Of course, technically there’s no DMCA takedown here — as Google was just doing some self-policing, but it seems like a pretty good question as to why the company is policing private videos that aren’t for public consumption.
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As Google prepares to blow out the 10 candles on top of its birthday cake this Sunday, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin can be forgiven for cracking a wry smile as they reflect upon the fire they have just lit under Microsoft.
The conflagration that has the creator of Windows running for the fire extinguisher was caused by Google’s launch of its own internet browser. The arrival of Chrome, announced in typically idiosyncratic style through the medium of an online comic strip this week, represents more than just a challenge to Microsoft’s market-leading Internet Explorer. It represents a fundamental fight over the future of the computer.
Microsoft, as so many potential rivals have found over the years, has a stranglehold over the market for the software that runs computers thanks to its hugely successful Windows operating system. So Google has taken heed of the old adage that if you cannot win, change the game.
The rise of broadband internet access has finally created an environment where applications such as word processors or spreadsheet programs do not need to reside on a computer. Instead they can be run on the internet and the documents created can be stored on web servers so they can be accessed from anywhere a person can get online. In a world where such web-based applications abound, it does not matter what operating system a computer runs because all it needs to have is an internet browser and an internet connection. In that world, a user could even opt for a free operating system.
It’s a change that Bill Gates himself foresaw when 13 years ago he wrote an internal memo in which he assigned the “highest level of importance” to the internet and warned his colleagues that it was a potential “tidal wave” that could fundamentally alter the rules.
That memo mentioned then market-leading browser Netscape as having the potential to “commoditize the underlying operating system”. That infamous memo was one of the catalysts of the browser wars of the late 1990s, which ultimately saw Internet Explorer crush Netscape Navigator, and it also included a line about ensuring that makers of computers ship their machines with a Microsoft browser pre-installed. That practice landed Microsoft in court and led to the effective split of the company. But by then the damage was done and Netscape ended up in the hands of AOL before disappearing all but completely.
When Gates testified as part of the anti-trust case brought against the company 10 years ago he was asked what that line about “commoditizing the operating system” had meant. He replied: “They were creating a product that would either reduce the value or eliminate demand for the Windows operating system if they continued to improve it and we didn’t keep improving our product.”
Firefox cub
Ironically, Chrome, which has been roughly two years in the making, builds upon innovations made in browser technology by Microsoft’s rival Mozilla, custodian of the Firefox browser, some of whose technological DNA comes from Netscape Navigator.
But the browser wars of a decade ago do not live on just within the technology of Chrome, but in Google’s decision to create it in the first place. The search engine’s chief executive admitted after the launch that “the browser wars of 10 years ago were right: the browser matters”.
Brin added that “operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world. They have become kind of bulky … We [web users] want a very lightweight, fast engine for running applications. The kind of things you want to have running standalone are shrinking.”
That is bad news for Microsoft, which makes a significant chunk of its revenues from its Windows operating system and Office suite of software, both of which sit upon the computer itself.
Google, of course, makes pretty much all of its revenues from online search. It has gone from a doctoral project at Stanford University to the world’s largest search engine in 10 years, blasting through the traditional media and advertising industries on the way. It is now one of the world’s most trusted and recognised brands.
Over the past few years, the company has moved into online applications and services such as email, word processing, calendars, instant messaging, maps, spreadsheets and even bought the online video phenomenon YouTube.
But ultimately everything it does is about persuading people to do more with the internet. The more time people spend online, the more likely they are to search for something and the more likely they are to generate revenues for Google or queries that help improve its search algorithm. So why would it want to dabble with browsers?
Firstly, the sense that Google’s executives have given over the past few days is that if the rest of the industry had produced good enough browsers, there would have been no need for them to create Chrome.
Announcing the launch of Chrome - which was leaked after a Google staffer posted a copy of the 38-page comic that heralded the move - the company said on its website: “People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they’re doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.
“We realised that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”
Android attack
Chrome, according to early testers, is certainly faster than many of the browsers already in the market - especially the current version of Internet Explorer - and it has been engineered so that if one website being visited freezes up, the entire program does not crash.
Google has moved into another area - mobile phones - for roughly similar reasons. The creation of its Android operating system for mobile phones - the first device that runs it is expected in time for Christmas - owes much to the fact that the mobile internet has been promised for years but the industry’s love of proprietary systems has held back its arrival.
The first gadget to deliver on the promise of the mobile web, Apple’s iPhone, owes some of its success to the fact that it is an “open” platform, so anyone who uses common web standards can create applications for it. Android is also an open mobile platform, in the same way as Chrome is an open browser platform.
But Chrome is also a crucial defensive play for Google. If you rely - as it does - on people having access to the internet to make your money you not only want to make it as simple as possible but ensure no one gets in your way.
The new, eighth version of Internet Explorer, which is due out soon, includes the ability to view web pages anonymously. Erasing a user’s online footprints would make it harder for Google to collect the data about visitors that it uses to improve search results and serve relevant adverts.
Chrome also has an anonymous browsing mode - which has quickly been dubbed “porn mode” because it hides details of where the user has been from other users of the same machine - but Google will still know what that user has been doing online.
Then there is the fact that browsers increasingly contain search boxes within them, raising the risk that a popular new browser could slowly squeeze Chrome out of the market by signing up with a rival search engine.
Google has already been hedging its bets. It has a deal with the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit-making organisation that funds the development of Firefox, the web’s second most popular browser, to have its search box within the browser itself. Just last month Google extended that deal - which has recently generated more than three quarters of Mozilla’s revenues - until 2011. Google’s toolbar is already standard on Apple’s Safari browser and can also be downloaded and installed on Internet Explorer.
Chrome has excited the tech world but ultimately it
all comes down to money and for Google that means more people searching more often. As Citigroup put it in a note to clients this week: “Given that search has become such a fundamental part of internet usage, anything that impacts overall internet usage is important for Google.”
Google is either more than 12, nearly 11, exactly 10 tomorrow or not quite 10 years old, depending on which event is taken as its birth. While still at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on technology that would become the forerunner of Google by January 1996. It was called BackRub, because it analysed back links - essentially the links to a site from other sites.
BackRub was “let loose” in March 1996. Brin and Page had created an algorithm that ranked pages by importance - PageRank, which is still at the heart of Google today. The bigger the internet got, they reckoned, the bigger the search engine would get, which led them to name it after googol, the term for the numeral one followed by a hundred zeros. Google was launched in August 1996
Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, invested $100,000, making the cheque out to Google Inc, which did not exist. So on September 7 1998 Brin and Page incorporated Google as a company.
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Not many people have heard of graphic designer Dennis Hwang, but he has millions of fans, and probably more than a billion people have seen his work. But the 29-year-old has a unique platform for his skills: he does the “Google doodles” – variations on Google’s colourful logo - that appear on the search engine’s popular home page.
The doodles that celebrate special days such as Christmas, Halloween and Google’s birthdays signal that Google is a different kind of company: a playful one. “It’s not a gimmick,” says Hwang. “It really grows from the core culture. It comes from the founders, Larry and Sergey, their quirky personalities and drive for innovation. At a time when the company logo is considered sacred, they’re saying ‘Let’s have fun with it’.”
I met Dennis in 2005 when he judged a Doodle 4 Google competition, which invited British schoolchildren aged four to 18 to design their own logo. It was a delight. Google’s office filled with kids, and 11-year-old Lisa Wainaina got to see her winning design on the Google UK home page.
“These kids are competition I wasn’t aware of,” quipped Hwang. “My job security just went out the window.”
In reality, doodling is a sideline, and started by accident in 1999 when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were going to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. “Sergey added a tiny symbol to the home page logo to communicate directly with the users,” says Hwang.
The next doodles were done by outside contractors, but then Brin discovered that Hwang was studying art at Stanford, as well as computer science. “He said: ‘Hey, Dennis, why don’t you give this a try’,” says Hwang. He did Bastille Day in 2000, and he’s been doing them ever since.
The staples are Chinese New Year, St Valentine’s Day, Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. These are supplemented by major events such as the Olympics, where there can be half a dozen doodles telling a little story.
Painters are an obvious temptation for a graphic artist, and there have been doodles to celebrate the birthdays of Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Andy Warhol, MC Escher, Claude Monet and Piet Mondrian, among others. But often Hwang surprises us: there have been doodles for Ray Charles’s birthday, Bloomsday, the transit of Venus, leap year and the opening of Google’s lunar office – on April 1. One 2001 doodle that attracted particular attention celebrated Korean Independence Day, and Hwang was interviewed for the Korea Herald. Although born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he grew up as Hwang Jung-moak in Gwacheon, South Korea. “When I was at school, the teachers didn’t like my doodling habit, but my parents always supported me,” he says. “Something that used to be frowned on turned out to be my greatest asset.”
Hwang returned to the US in 1992 when his father was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, and had to cope with the American education system while unable to speak English. He still made it to Stanford University, where Google was founded.
The doodles are produced on computer, but “everything I do is hand drawn”, says Hwang: “I have some tools and tricks to make it look as though it’s done on pencil and paper.” He’s been using a Wacom graphics tablet and a stylus for input, and adopted a Tablet PC so he could work directly on the screen. “That’s my secret weapon,” he says. “It shaves two to four hours off how long it takes to draw one.”
• Google’s doodle competition
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