It’s a great day when Internet giant Google open sources the programs it uses to build well-known favourites such as GMail, Docs and Google Maps. It announced on its blog that it will be making a lot of it’s own development software available to developers all over the world. This release comes as Google are undoubtedly upgrading their own tools especially with the upcoming launch of Google Wave.
The first of the three tools they released is called Closure Compiler which helps developers trim down code and optimize it for better performance. There is also a plug-in for Firefox released alongside this so they can view heir Java Script code in the browser.
The second one is called Library which is a tool to help build Java Script Apps. Here is what Google said on their official blog about the program:
The Closure Library is a JavaScript library that provides many features that are useful for building web applications across browsers. It helps to abstract browser differences and provides clean class and function interfaces for common tasks. Besides DOM interaction and UI tools, the library includes tools for arrays, objects, string manipulation and much more. The library also implements a name spacing and import standard, which helps keep scripts small and load fast when used with the Closure Compiler.
The third and final release until further notice was Templates. This is an app that is for creating HTML elements that can be used within Java Script.
Closure Templates simplify the task of dynamically creating HTML and have an easy-to-read syntax. They allow you to write templates for reusable HTML and UI elements that can be used within JavaScript or on the server side in Java. They also have excellent run-time performance because they are never parsed on the client side.
Over the next month or so there is undoubtedly going to be a big rush of new Java apps and programs onto the market thanks to the Google outsourcing. Be sure to stay in touch with Crenk to stay informed!
Google has always been known to mark special occasions such as Christmas, St. Patricks Day, 4th of July and many others depending on what country you live in, by creating a new Google logo, or doodle as they have become known, for their homepage.
Well for two days in a row they have been celebrating the anniversaries of two famous children’s TV shows.
Yesterday they had a Wallace and Grommet logo to mark the 20th anniversary of their creation:
And today, Google.co.uk is displaying the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street to mark the 40th anniversary of the show.
GazoPa is an image search engine that allows you to scour the web for images not by entering a word – but by entering another image.
Its main function is to find similar images around the web to that of the one you entered. It’s like the service currently offered by Google Labs.
You can also draw a quick sketch of what you want your picture to look like and submit it so you get back photographs or artwork. You can then filter your results by colour, shape and size. The search engine will also bring back video content that is related to the images – it. If a picture is used as a thumbnail for a video on YouTube then GazoPa will retrieve the video as well.
Today finding the music you want, when you want it has been channeled to using sites like the Amazon store or iTunes. Sometimes, when looming for an obscure song that is not mainstream, you’d be lucky to find it. This frustrating experience paired with the perceived greedines of corporate music labels has forced many of us to find our music on peer to peer networks or bitorrent sites such the Pirate Bay.
Songbeat360.com is an amazingly innovative way of integrating a music player with a music search. Now you can listen to your favorite songs while searching for more. You are essentially still building your own station, much like Pandora or Last.fm, but on this music player you have the ability to download your music immediately.
Bypassing the need to go to the likes of Amazon or iTunes may please some, but does the pricing compare? Based on the site, the application is an Adobe Air app, and comes with 25 free credits. Credits are used when a search is done, and searches are supposedly capable of returning up to 500 results, ensuring you will fond what you need. For further credits, those can be purchased via a stored credit card. For $15 you receive 1000 credits for more music, which breaks down to a whole lot less than $.99 per song on the iTunes store. This is of course assuming you find what you want in one search.
Is the next revolution to your music search? I’d say know, but it’s definitely interesting. The pricing alone is attractive, and if the quality is the same, I can see this web app becoming extremely successful.
Offers.com is the leading coupon and special offers website on the World Wide Web these days – having worked damn hard to get there over the past six years that it has been online. Every single day the upload hundreds of new offers and coupon codes for us consumers to devour and save money on.
Some offers I seen after just a few minutes of browsing could save you up to 50% – not bad for the Christmas shopping!
Recently, they launched a new feature on their website called ‘Locker’. This new feature allows you to store and track offers from certain companies and websites without even having to register. Beside every offer on the website there is a ‘Watch this offer’ button, once you click it the offer is stored in your locker on that computer. However, if you want to have access to your offers from multiple computers or devices it’s recommended that you sign up with just an e-mail address.
Seriously though, if you want to save big bucks online and in retail outlets – Offers.com.
If you’ve been surfing the web (do people still say that?) for a while today you may have noticed that Google’s doodle today is odd, in fact it’s not really a doodle – but a barcode. Oh, and in spite of the recent debacle when Google announced that it would no longer be paying artists to create their doodles, rather the publicity alone would act as payment, this isn’t the beginning of a decline in Google’s doodles as a result.
They are simply celebrating the anniversary of that little invention we all take for granted at the supermarket; the barcode. By clicking on the doodle you get search results for ‘Barcode’. I can only imagine what the image results would be.
Before I sign off for today, a few facts about the barcode.
v It was originally circular so it could be scanned from all angles. Often called a bull’s-eye.
v The first product ever to be scanned in a real life situation was a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum in a supermarket in Ohio in June of 1974.
v Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver (the inventors) never made much money from their invention as they sold the patent before it was commercialised. Silver never even lived to see its success as he died in a car crash before it was released to the public.
Google’s minimalistic homepage has been a cornerstone of the internet for the past decade or so. Now, they’re testing out a new homepage which will take the word count from thirty down to one; ‘Google’.
Basically, it will look like the screenshot above with everything but the Google logo and search function being removed. This includes their famous ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button
When you move the mouse however near any area where buttons used to be they will appear. The thinking is that this new method will have the best of both worlds: minimalism and functionality.
However, they are only bucket testing the new homepage to see how it goes down so only a certain percentage of users will actually get access to the new design. For those of you who can’t, see the video below.
The Internet moves at a staggering pace. In a single day it gains more news, blogs and twitters than you could read in a lifetime. Fads come and go over night and it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep track of what is relevant. This is where Twittorati comes in.
From the guys who brought us Technorati, one of the top blog search engines on the net, Twittorati aims to sift the gibberish from junk, tracking tweets from the highest authority bloggers and posting them in a way that’s meaningful and easy to follow.
It’s all about ‘authority’ and what determines a blogs authority is the number of unique blogs that link to that blog. The technology for this is the same as Technorati. In fact Twittorati incorporates blogs from the Technorati Top 100 and promises to include “many more of the web’s most influential voices.”
It’s certainly a good idea but after a brief look on the website I couldn’t actually find I was genuinely interested. Sure it’s all convenient, at any time at anytime I”m only a few clicks away from the highest authority blogs and tweets on the net but therein lies the problem.
There are no rare gems, no cult hits and no must know info-bites. Having a high authority does not mean it’s a good blog. Take a quick look at the front page, how much of that do you actually care about? Very little I bet. Well it’s not all bad and it really depends on how much you care about tweets in general.
No, it’s not exactly Google’s Twitter Timeline; but you could consider these as tweets I guess. This list represents the entire life of Google represented in chronologically: Google Timeline.
A few months back we’ve talked about the history of Microsoft, the OTHER big company, and we had the chance to see how from a simple idea you can, not only build an entire company, you can design the future. Quite similar like they did with Google, here’s what they’ve called “Google Master Plan”.
(Click on the picture to see a large version. You would probably be amazed with all the stuff that appears there and they haven’t done it, just yet)
Getting back to Google Timeline, take a close look to that, because you would probably find some things that you didn’t even know.
We’ve discussed before about Facebook’s future: Mark Zuckeberg said in an interview that they are not only focusing in maintaining it as a simple website, Facebook will represent the entire platform that any user will need as for identification, business and relationship, said Zuckeberg. And now they are taking another step towards that goal: Expanding the Facebook Mobile platform, that exists since 2008 for traditional websites and Apple’s iPhone, and now it will be available for any mobile platform.
Henri Moissinac, head of Facebook’s mobile operations, presented in the Nokia World about the implementation of “Facebook Connect for Mobile Web” in a new and simple method. With only 4 lines of code, any site, application and platform can use Facebook’s API, the only requirement: A web browser.
“What we did for photo sharing, we are going to do for mobile applications,” said Moissinac. And they seem that are doing it right, because in last month of August, Facebook Mobile had 65 million users.
And of course, the expansion strategy keeps on going: Facebook’s television interaction it is here already. Moissinac said that one of their ambitions is to start working with games consoles, as they announced previously with Microsoft’s Xbox.
Do you still think that their goal about representing an entire platform of identification, business and relationship sounds too much?
When Bing and Yahoo! decided recently that they would work together in an effort to stage an offensive against the internet giant that is Google, I though competition between the two had come to an untimely end. I was wrong.
As it happens, although the two search engines will work together to defeat Google they will still compete for glory. Perhaps we will see a kind of WW2 cooperation just like the bitter Allies united to defeat the Nazis…not that Google is a Nazi.
A senior vice president of Yahoo! said “We are Yahoo and that will continue…We collaborate on the back-end but we are competitors on the front-end,”
I guess this makes sense. I mean, what were we all expecting? Yahoo! and Bing to come together like two lost lovers? Nonsense. This is a recession and both companies will by going full steam ahead to stay afloat. They will share advertising revenue with both search engines using the Bing ad model. The deal is due to come into affect next year and will last for ten years. By the end of that time will Google have been defeated? And will Yahoo! be left needing Bing more than Bing needs Yahoo?
I’m all for protecting children online. There are a lot of unsuitable content, and indeed sick people out there. But I say most of that work should be placed the hands of companies who make content filtering software like Norton and of course the parents. It most certainly should not be the job of the search engines to censor results – in my opinion.
Recently, a search engine launched in Russia. It’s called, Gougle (ring any bells?). It filters our bad content such as porn and graphic or violent videos. But then it goes a step further and takes a leaf out of China’s book.
Gougle won’t let you access some of the accounts of horrible events in history such as genocide or evil people like Hitler. While I can see their thinking, I think they are making a huge mistake. If you hide history, what will future generations learn from?
It’s a great day when Internet giant Google open sources the programs it uses to build well-known favourites such as GMail, Docs and Google Maps. It announced on its blog that it will be making a lot of it’s own development software available to developers all over the world. This release comes as Google are undoubtedly upgrading their own tools especially with the upcoming launch of Google Wave.
Today finding the music you want, when you want it has been channeled to using sites like the 
When Bing and Yahoo! 
I’m all for 
