| Again with the Scooping |
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Last month I had an idea for a post, came into the office, and found that TechCrunch beat me to it. Today the same thing happened. (I guess I’ll have to start working 16 hour days, 7 days a week, like Michael Arrington does.) I was mulling over yesterday’s product announcements by Microsoft and Google in my mind last night. Microsoft’s was just so, well, Microsoftian: “Let’s trot out the next version of our search engine. We’ll call it a ‘Decision Engine’ and give it a spiffy name, but it’ll be basically the same old warmed-up leftovers. Kinda like how we do operating systems.” Google’s announcement? It was real Googley: “Let’s change everything. We’ll create a comprehensive communication tool that combines all the things we use now, but are segmented or fragmented. It’ll be flexible. And open source, so it can grow in ways we haven’t thought of (yet).” As I’m bouncing these ideas around in my head, my T-Mobile G1 buzzed and started to load its new firmware update, codenamed “Cupcake“. (I’m digging the on-screen “soft” keyboard and auto-rotation between portrait and landscape modes. My wife is wondering why the seemingly-normal man she married is now getting frothy-mouthed over a phone upgrade.) Anyway, Android, the phone’s operating system, is free and open source. Google gives it away for free to handset manufacturers. Could these two companies be any more different in how they view the world? To get back to this article’s narrative hook, Arrington beat me with a great post titled, “What Just Happened? Thursday Was Supposed To Be Bing Day.” The image at the top is a hoot, as is this gem: “You know that scene in the Lord Of The Rings movie where the huge eye of Sauron on top of that mountain swings its view from the alliance troops massed at the Black Gate of Mordor over to the real action, Frodo with the Ring at the Cracks of Doom? That’s basically what happened today. The eyes of the world, and the press, swung from San Diego to San Francisco as they realized what was happening. And what was happening was this: Google stole Microsoft’s thunder with one of the most ambitious and exciting products the tech world has seen in a long while.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (0)May 28, 2009
| Another Product Announcement: Google Wave |
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While we’re on the topic of product announcements, Google’s announced Wave, which is all about rich, multi-threaded, real-time communication. It is, according to its developers, the answer to the question “What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?” I don’t have access to Wave right now. Even if I did, I don’t have time today to review it myself. (I’m due at Drexel in an hour.) Here are posts from Wired, Tim O’Reilly, and TechCrunch (plus a TC video interview with Wave’s developers) that you can digest. That said, here’s the best, most concise summary of Wave I could find (from the Wired article): “There are few effective ways to communicate within small groups, whether co-workers, friends, or family. Most of us use e-mail, just addressing a new message to a bunch of people. This starts a thread, which eventually gets twisted and fragmented into side conversations and becomes more and more confusing. The more-organized among us use tools like IM or IRC chat rooms, wikis, group blogs or web apps built for threaded communications, such as FriendFeed. Google Wave is an attempt to replace not one but all of these methods, rolling threaded conversations, real-time chat, nested comments, media sharing, link sharing and wiki-style collaboration into a familiar interface that looks and behaves like an e-mail inbox, complete with folders for keeping things organized and a search box for digging up older threads.” It sounds interesting, but it also goes against my Keep It Simple Stupid sensibilities. I guess I’ll have to use it for awhile before I make any judgements. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Microsoft “Unveils” Bing. It Looks Like a Polar Bear in a Snowstorm to Me. [UPDATED] |
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Today Microsoft issued a press release “unveiling” its new search engine, Bing. When I clicked on the link in the PR page, I saw a nice blank page. Sort of like a field, after a snowstorm, before anybody walks through it. I’ve noted previously that Microsoft just doesn’t get the concept of branding. Right now, Bing is another example of this. Would it have killed them to slap some “Coming June 3!” stuff on the page as a placeholder? Geeze. Anyway, if you want to learn more about Microsoft’s new search engine, here are four articles for you. UPDATE, 5 minutes later – They’ve got a “Coming Soon!” page up, with a link to learn more about their “Decision Engine“. (Hmmm … in the last 2 months, we’ve gotten a “Discovery Engine”, a “Computational Knowledge Engine”, and now a “Decision Engine”. “Search Engine” is now officially an obsolete term.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| AOL’s Lost Decade to End Soon |
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Time Warner’s board has stated the obvious — they’ve “enthusiastically endorsed” spinning off AOL — the poster child for the dot-com bubble — as a separate company by the end of this year. As part of the deal, TW will have to buy back Google’s 5% stake in the company. But there’ll still be a bit of Google left in AOL — back in March Google’s head of U.S. advertising sales, Tim Armstrong, became AOL’s CEO. I think this means that the 1990s are now, finally, officially over. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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May 26, 2009
| Facebook Says Spasibo for the 200 Million Bucks |
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Facebook has announced that they are taking a $200 million investment (for a 1.96% ownership stake) from Digital Sky Technologies, an investment group based in London and Russia. DST is getting preferred stock in the deal, but no seat on the FB board. FB is now valued at $10 billion, 2/3 of what it was when Microsoft pumped $250 million into it back in 2007. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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May 25, 2009
| Nolo's Quick LLC.: All You Need to Know About Limited Liability Companies |
 By Anthony MancusoIf you run your own business, you’ve probably heard about limited liability companies. Business owners who operate LLCs aren’t personally liable for business debts, so their personal assets are never at risk. But is an LLC right for you? Practical, concise and easy to read, the 5th edition of Nolo’s Quick LLC provides the latest facts, figures and updated tax information you’ll need to know about this structure for your small business. Library Record • Borrow it • Buy it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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May 22, 2009
| Another Oddball Wolfram Answer |
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I’ve noted previously how the answers can morph in Wolfram|Alpha. Here’s another example: a search for gdp tells me that the U.S.’s is $13.78 trillion. (Ditto for gdp U.S.) However, a search for gdp U.S. by state gives me an answer of $13.74 trillion. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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May 20, 2009
| Pop Quiz: Which Horse Came in Second on Saturday in the Preakness? |
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Mine That Bird. Very good. And third? Do you need to take a few minutes to Google it? (I did.) Unless you bet your house on them, you don’t care about second and third, do you? Nah. Same is true with search engines. Nobody’s talking about Yahoo and Microsoft right now — we’re focused on Twitter’s “Discovery Engine” and Wolfram|Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine“. (Engines … Maybe I should have used a car racing analogy instead. Oh well, too late to change horses now.) Anyway, Microsoft and Yahoo are now trying to get our attention. There’s talk that Microsoft will launch its new and improved search engine next week. Microsoft, nosogood at branding, has toyed with calling the new service Kumo. Danny Sullivan thinks the service might actually be called Bing. Bing? Yahoo, dropping like a stone, said Tuesday that they’re gonna get smarter. They recognize that people want a quick answer, not a list of 10 blue links. Are they ready with a new Yahoo? No. Will any of this ultimately matter? No. The search biz has passed Microsoft and Yahoo by. Lemmee tell you a story. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at Monday’s graduation ceremonies at Penn. Provost Vincent Price joked about how he collected background info on Schmidt for his introduction: “I went to the Internet and I Yahooed him. [laughter] When the name of your company becomes a verb, and the substitution of a competitor sounds ridiculous, that is market penetration.” When the leader of a major university tells 5,000 graduating students that you’re “ridiculous”, you need to find another line of business. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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May 19, 2009
| Wifi on AirTran: There’s Nothing Stopping You (Except Maybe the Price) [UPDATED] |
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The NY Times is reporting today about how AirTran will install Aircell’s Gogo Inflight wifi service on its entire fleet of Boeing 717s and 737s by mid-summer. (Other airlines are adding in-flight wifi as well.) The article points out 3 problems with in-flight wifi:
I wouldn’t try to use the in-flight wifi on a laptop or with my new netbook — it seems I always get stuck with a Lazy Boy Recliner in front of me — but I’d consider trying it out with my T-Mobile G1. UPDATE, 5/20 – Virgin America says they’re now offering Gogo on every domestic flight. Take that, AirTran! |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| My First Week With a Netbook |
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I’ve been interested in netbooks since last autumn. I didn’t buy one at the time because I wound up getting my mitts on a T-Mobile G1 smartphone. Last week I pulled the trigger — I got the Acer Aspire One. For me, it was an impulse purchase. I stopped into my local Micro Center (aka Valhalla) ostensibly to look at the Lenovo S10. I swear I was just gonna look. Then I saw the Aspire for $279 and thought, “What the heck. If it croaks after 6 months I’m not out that much money.” My wife was like, “$279 is nothing if it makes you shut up about netbooks.” So, boom, the deal was done. Pros:
Cons:
Final note: The Acer’s running Windows XP. I decided to go without antivirus (but did turn on the Windows firewall), ’cause I’m just sooo tired of having it slow me down. I decided to stick exclusively with Google Chrome because it’s way safer than IE and even Firefox. We’ll see how it goes. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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