RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Google – Bring it.

11 Apr

Google is 'into' a lot of things these days and I  love Android, Gmail and Googlevoice just to name a few areas, but I'm beginning to miss the days when Google was just a search engine. Google got to where it is because it was an extremely good and probably the best internet search engine. What happened? Today, unless I want to know about Britney Spears latest album a lot of Google search results just seem to range from useless to irrelevant.

Yes, if you use advanced search, bracketed keyword and date range filters you can still get decent search results but this is a long way from what used to be the Google trademark minimalist drop dead easy. The internet really needs Google 2.0 classic. whether or not that is delivered by Google present.

While I am on the Google roll. Can I donate the $100.00 Adwords gift you keep tossing my way to say "Doctors without Borders"? Can they in turn cash it in? I'm not interested in buying into Adwords fueled Pagerank schemes no matter how attractive and lucrative you make them seem. You and J C Penney go off into a corner and slug it out. This is just a a blog.  I'm not selling stuff and I neither want nor ask for your editorial advice as to whom I should talk to, follow or lead.

Honestly, if you published the constitution every amendment would open with "sponsor-targeted Adword links" and close with a "no follow" tag.  Bring on Google Classic and thanks in advance.

 
Comments Off

Posted in News, Observations

 

Google broadband – still waiting

20 Dec

Google high speed Broadband

 

Google has delayed selecting the town to receive a free fiber-to-the home network. A lot of towns are hoping to see their location selected for the 1 gigabit fiber network.

Of course being on the cutting edge of new Google apps designed to take advantage of all that bandwidth is also an incentive – but for now everyone will have to wait because Google still isn't saying.

I'm pretty sure that my town is not in the running for GoogleNet – but it's safe to say that if Google delivers widespread fiber in say the next decade, they will still beat out Verizon. Verizon has advertised FIOS existence in my town almost from day one of its (at least four years now) that is, until you try to actually order it – then they will cheerfully tell you about the wonders of the DSLservice that they also happen to provide.  
Somewhere in my town there is a house
A house with a FIOS link
 
Only Verizon knows for sure 
you can ask, but will ask in vain. 
 
You will get DSL,likely ADSL,
have patience – do not ask for more, 
 
The reps will shrug and with a wave 
point you to a Cablevision store. 
—–
(apologies to the The Animals)
 
Comments Off

Posted in Observations

 

Mobile Data plan shake up

04 Nov

The coming Mobile Data plan shake up

There has been a lot of talk about a shake-up in the mobile data carrier space: "T-Mobile drops its data plan cap", "AT&T initiates a tiered pricing model for data", "Verizon raises its early termination fees".

Frankly, the discussions have been nothing but "Smoke and Mirrors", avoiding the real issues. Consumers are watching and ultimately there will be a consumer backlash. It just takes one company – my money is on Google, to offer a real pricing alternative and then the carriers are going to be crying for government protection. 

Why the current model is wrong.

The current model is fine for the carriers who, in typical fashion are trying to ensure that  they leave no consumer dollars on the table. The model is ridiculous for the consumer. Let's take a hypothetical consumer "Sandy G". Sandy pays for carrier internet service at home for approximately $40.00 per month. Sandy G has a "smart" cell phone which comes with a mandatory data plan that adds about $40.00 per month (data plan plus taxes and fees) to her cell phone bill. Sandy buys a 3G enabled tablet computer which costs her (you guessed it) about $40.00 per month for the 3G service data plan. Sandy is now, for arguments sake, paying the same carrier approximately $120.00 per month for her internet service across all three access points. Even if we ignore the contract lock-in effect essentially every 3G device that Sandy adds means another $40.00 per month "service fee" to her internet carrier. If Sandy G is married and if there are cell-phone owning children as well then you can see how the carrier can sell the "G's" the same service over and over again.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Observations

 

The first OOMA – Google wave?

27 Apr

I’m in the process of trying out Google Wave – It looks interesting, the functionality kind of reminds me of Lotus Notes in the mix of email, collaboration tools, document management and instant messaging of course the implementation is way ahead of Lotus Notes but this is just a very quick first impression on my part.

BTW: I started a public OOMA Google wave which appears to be the only public OOMA Google wave (are there any private ones going on?)- of course being a wave you need to have participants so if anyone is interested in testing out Google Wave along with me then just add a comment (to be clear, you don’t have to join the OOMA wave discussion to get the invite). I have only six invites at the moment (sorry) – if I get more then I’ll say so – but first six comments get them.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Observations, Technology

 

Google's changed the game – again!

16 Apr

Google just unveiled a strategy for universal printing over on its chromium blog. The technology ties in to the chrome browser but, it will go beyond that to (in Google’s words) allow printing from any web app:

Infographic from Google Chromium blog: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html

“...design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today. Using the one component all major devices and operating systems have in common– access to the cloud– today we’re introducing some preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer.” Read the rest of this entry »

 
Comments Off

Posted in Just Business, Technology, Web Services

 

DNS Servers and IP Addresses: A Quick Overview

03 Mar

This is a companion post to the OOMA DNS configuration post. If you don’t want to know what’s going on under the covers then you can just skip reading now.

DNS Request Flow

Domain Name Servers (DNS) translate the familiar web names to computer understandable numbers. Every single internet connected machine is assigned a unique number.  You could type in http://72.14.204.99 in your browser and get to Google or you could type in http://google.com – clearly google.com is going to be easier to remember than the number (IP address). Even if you were to remember Google’s IP address what about all of the other web sites that you go to – how would you remember all of their IP addresses? Clearly (for people) a name based system (DNS) makes sense.

Computers however still work on a numbering system so every time you type in a name the computer sends the name to a DNS server for translation. The DNS servers get called at least once (and frequently dozens of times depending on the type of resource being requested).  Unless you are on a pure text-only web page then every image, script, icon, button and link on a web page has its own name and so a single request for a web page could result in several DNS requests. Read the rest of this entry »

 
Comments Off

Posted in Technology