As you’ve notice I am not updating tokao as often as I normally do.
There is good reason for that.
I am a father for the first time.
Kai was born on the 8th of December at 5.09am. Now he and his mother are at home.
I am very busy this week at work and at home. I will gradually increase the amount of postings as next week.
Google’s freshly launched real-time search is the big news of the week. And as it turns out, real-time search is not just limited to public searches on Google.com, but is also available to Google Search Appliance users.
Now, if your intranet or Web site search is powered by Google’s enterprise universal search appliance, you too can take in real-time tweets related to search queries.
There are two key differences to point out between Google.com and Google Search Appliance. Google Search Appliance users will notice that real-time search is limited to just Twitter feeds for the time being (you’ll have to forgo Facebook Page updates and the like for now), and tweets are displayed in a separate search box. So while Google.com’s implementation shows tweets appearing inline with other results, intranet search will highlight them separately.
If you’re a GSA user, you’ll want to have an administrator follow these instructions to turn on real-time tweets for search. You’ll also have the option to enable the functionality for all users, individual users, or allow for users to self-select their real-time preferences.
The Google Enterprise Blog writes:
“Social information is important for businesses: employees searching for information needed to do their jobs benefit from real-time news too. They might be developing a new breakfast cereal, or designing a marketing plan for a clothing line, or writing strategy report for a political campaign. In all of these cases, understanding what is being said just as Twitter users are saying it can be invaluable.”
The addition of Twitter updates to enterprise search seems like an natural extension of Google’s new-found focus on real-time. If you’re a GSA user, share your thoughts on the development below.
A couple weeks ago, Google unveiled its Chrome Extensions site after clues began popping up that a full-on push for extension support in their browser was imminent. Unfortunately, that site was only meant for extension developers who were allowed to upload their creations to Google. On the page, Google promised that end users who were looking for these extensions would have a way to do so “soon.” That will happen next week, we’ve learned.
Two sources close to the situation say that Google plans to unveil its Extensions Gallery at some point next week, probably in the middle of the week. This makes sense since Add-on-Con 09, a conference devoted to browser add-ons, is taking place next Friday, and Google Chrome is a Gold Sponsor of the event. Obviously, Google will probably want to have something they can actually show off at the event, rather than just a developer dashboard.
Apparently, the Extensions Gallery will be much like the Chrome Themes Gallery. It will be a page that lists a bunch of extensions and has a button to one-click download the ones you want. Presumably there will also be a link to learn more about what each extension actually does.
Several developers already have their extensions ready to go for Chrome. We’ve profiled Aviary’sand Shareaholic’s recently. And actually, there have been hundreds of extensions unofficially available for Chrome for some time via sites like Chrome Extensions. This morning we profiled 11 of the best ones found there.
Initially, Extension support will only be for the Windows-based version of Chrome. Even thoughthe launch of the beta version of Chrome for Mac is imminent, that version will not have extension support built-in. However, the latest builds of Chromium (the open-source browser that Chrome is built off of) for Mac does support extensions, and even has an extension manager that works. It would appear that the Linux build of Chrome will support extensions whenever that beta is available.
Extensions will be very important for Chrome as it attempts to hit Google’s stated 10 percent market share goal in the next couple of years. Extensions have been one of the keys to the success of Firefox, as it continues to steal market share from the once utterly dominant Internet Explorer.
(from techcrunch)
In a world of Photoshop and special effects, artistic craft wrought by hand is getting harder to come by. But Liu Bolin doesn’t need any fancy technology to produce the jaw-dropping illusion of invisibility – his urban camouflage photography is all paint and pure talent.
The Beijing-based artist spends hours studying his chosen locations and painting himself and other subjects, while carefully taking perspective and texture into account for spectacular results that render them almost invisible.
But Liu’s work is more than just a cool-looking feat of trompe l’oeil. In the past, works depicting anti-government imagery, including some in which his Chinese subjects are in the grips of police officers, have resulted in the Chinese government shutting down his art studio.
“In my photography, historical statues, costumes and architecture become symbols of that which confines us,” Liu says. “I am expressing the desire to break through these structures. I portray subjects that seem to disappear into these structures and become transparent. The subject is released from social constructs and he is free.”
“Living in the red hot China, I feel that I am not in control of my own life. However, I have an indescribable burning desire inside of me. Art is a weapon that helps us untangle the chaos in our lives. I hope that my artworks can calm people down during this period of constant change, but at the same time, inspire people to re-evaluate our environment and reconsider the problems arising in our society. In this transition period, I can hear the voice of Hamlet whispering, “for in the sleep of death, what dreams may come.”
(from weburbanist)
We were thinking about going on a cruise once our baby is born… so I looked for options, and I found a floating paradise. Judge for yourself, it is the world’s largest cruise.
The massive $1.5 billion vessel is nearly 40 percent larger than the industry’s next-biggest ship and five times larger than the Titanic. It has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members. The ship also features various “neighborhoods” — parks, squares and arenas with special themes. One of them will be a tropical environment that will include palm trees. The Oasis of the Seas will embark on its first cruise on Dec. 5. Hundreds of onlookers turned out to greet the ship from shore.
As it is with everything Google does, the technology world went into a tizzy when in 2007, the search giant released Google Gears, a way to access web applications offline in your browser. Microsoft responded with its own technology and Adobe Systems came out with AIR. And while our readers were divided on Google Gears, gigaom are skeptical of the technology, mostly because of its limitations.
Despite our skepticism, Google Gears, which worked on most major browsers and most operating systems, made its way into some of my favorite applications including Google Docs. But the fact of the matter is that I didn’t pay much attention to Google Gears. I was always so connected — with a BlackBerry, an iPhone, wireless broadband via MiFi, broadband at home and at the office — and so never needed offline access. And while another time I would have used Google Gears was when I was flying, now there’s usually connectivity in the air as well. Besides, even though I like the idea of connectivity when flying, I much prefer to write out my thoughts in long hand in my always-on Moleskin notebook.
Now, nearly two years later, Stacey has pointed out to me a story in the Los Angeles Timesabout Google quietly phasing out Google Gears. The company is instead betting the farmon HTML5, a constellation of technologies that make it easy to replicate the Google Gears functionality.
“We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites,” a Google spokesman told The Los Angeles Times.
Given that HTML5 is still a work in progress, Google is keeping Gears on life support, as outlined in these comments by a spokesman for the company:
“We’re continuing to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML5 for these features moving forward as it’s a standards-based approach that will be available across all browsers.”
So what’s behind Google’s big bet on HTML5? In a word: mobile.
The company wants to push HTML5 so that people use it to write web apps that match the quality of the native apps for its two emergent platforms: Android and Chrome OS. Google’s biggest problem with both of these mobile-oriented operating systems is that it has to work with hardware partners, which makes it difficult for the company to maintain a tight control on the ecosystem. Motorola, HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have all come out with their own interfaces for the Android, which is already causing some developer dissatisfaction. Against such a backdrop, it makes perfect sense for Google to promote web-based apps, because it means there be will a unified experience for end users, regardless of the device (and the platform.)
Oh, and let’s not forget about Apple!
Steve Jobs & Co. scare the bejeezus out of Google. In a recent interview with Fox News, Google CEO Eric Schmidt candidly admitted that his company needed an open Internet in order to do its job. Indeed, just as it needs to corral information we are likely to search for, Google needs as much access as it can possibly get to what you and I do in order to serve us more targeted advertising.
Apple, on the other hand, thanks to the growing popularity of its applications, is promoting a new way of interacting with what is clearly going to be the next big platform: the superphone. Just as Facebook is training people to consume information via the news feed (river of news) format, Apple is turning compute usage into a specific activity. In doing so, it’s causing some problems for Google, as apps are silos that are out of reach from Google’sspiders. If Google can’t access the content, it can’t serve up matching adds. I suspect that has something to do with why Google decided to spend $750 million to buy AdMob. The ad company’s code is embedded inside thousands of iPhone apps, so its acquisition will ostensibly give Google a chance to still make money despite being locked out of the apps.
As we wrote back in August, HTML5 is a good way to break Apple’s stranglehold, as illustrated by this Pie Guy variation of the classic Pacman game, which uses HTML5 to replicate the user experience you would find normally in a native iPhone app. With web apps, Google can not only continue to have access to user data (public not private), it can also continue to serve advertising to those users. For developers, it would mean embedding Google ads in their web apps. I like the gumption of Google’s plan, except for one small thing: Web apps will need better wireless networks with much lower latency and higher bandwidth capabilities in order to meet (and beat) the native apps.
So there you have it — why Google Gears must die in order for Google (and HTML5) to live on.
(from gigaom)
As some of you have noticed, I have been in the black since the weekend. Internet just went down. From 20 min ago it is up again, but not at the speed of light… and telephone still does not work.
Let’s hope everything goes back to normal soon.
Recent Comments