Google Products imbibes :-/

Google already knows its search sucks (and is working on to fix it) !!

It’s a popular notion these days I've posted in my blog that Can Google Get Its thaumaturgy Back ?? due to failed products like Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google TV. But Google’s core business — Web search — has come under fire recently for being the ultimate in failed tech products.

Search has been increasingly gamed by link and content farms year by year, and users have been frogs slowly getting boiled in water without realizing it. (Bing has similarly bad results, a testament to Microsoft’s quest to copy everything Google.)

But here’s what these late-blooming critics miss: Yes, Google’s search results do indeed suck. But Google’s fixing it.

The much acclaimed PageRank algorithm, which ranks search results based on the highest number of inbound links, has failed since it’s easy for marketers to overwhelm the number of organic links with a bunch of astroturfed links. Case in point: The Google.com page that describes PageRank is #4 in the Google search results for the term PageRank, below two vendors that are selling search engine marketing.

Facebook, which can rank content based on the number of Likes from actual people rather than the number of inbound links from various websites, can now provide more relevant hits, and in realtime since it does not have to crawl the web. A Like is registered immediately. No wonder Facebook scares Google.

But the secret to Google’s success was actually not PageRank, although it makes for a good foundation myth. The now-forgotten AltaVista, buried within Yahoo and due to be shut down, actually returned great results by employing the exact opposite of PageRank, and returned pages that were hubs and had links to related content.

Google’s secret was that it could scale infinitely on low-cost hardware and was able to keep up with the Internet’s exponential growth, while its competitors such as AltaVista were running on expensive, big machines running processors like the DEC Alpha. When the size of the Web doubled, Google could cheaply keep up on commodity PC hardware, and AltaVista was left behind. Cheap and expandable computing, not ranking Web pages, is what Google does best. Combine that with an ever-expanding data set, based on people’s clicks, and you have a virtuous circle that keeps on spinning.

The folks at Google have not been asleep at the wheel. They are well aware that their search results were being increasingly gamed by search marketers and that this was not a battle they were going to win. The answer has been to dump the famous blue links on which Google built its business.

Over the past couple of years, Google has progressively added vertical search results above its regular results. When you search for the weather, businesses, stock quotes, popular videos, music, addresses, airplane flight status, and more, the search results of what you are looking for are  presented immediately. The vast majority of users are no longer clicking through pages of Google results: They are instantly getting an answer to their question:

Google is in the unique position of being able to learn from billions and billions of queries what is relevant and what can be verticalized into immediate results. Google’s search value proposition has now transitioned to immediately answering your question, with the option of sifting through additional results. And that’s through a combination of computing power and accumulated data that competitors just can’t match.

For those of us who have watched this transition closely and attentively over the past few years, it has been an amazing feat that should be commended. So while I am the Second to make fun of Google’s various product failures, Google search is no longer one of them.

Reservoir !!!

A Game for philologists ;)

“Z-Type”: An HTML5 Video Game for English Majors !!!

If you have, throughout the course of your life, spent more time typing on a keyboard than fiddling with a joystick, We’ve got the perfect video game for you. We hope you’re prepared to dominate.

Z-Type might remind you a little bit of Asteroids or Missile Command, but it might remind you even more of scrambling through keystrokes to send an emergency e-mail or finish an overdue term paper (or in our case, break news in a blog post).

Words appear in the screen, accompanied by dramatic music. As you type, you “shoot” at the words until they explode at the last keystroke. The higher you level up, the faster the words appear, and the greater their numbers become.

Z-Type was made with Impact, an HTML5 JavaScript game framework released at the tail end of 2010. It plays nicely with most web browsers as well as with mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Both the game and the framework were created by developer Dominic Szablewski. Szablewski made Z-Type for the Mozilla Game On development competition. He said in his blog that he was inspired by games like The Typing of the Dead .

Reservoir !!!

Snips :

• Gaming.mozillalabs
• The Typing of the Dead

Facebook says its faux news !!!

Facebook Says It’s NOT Shutting Down March 15 !!!

There’s a silly rumor exploding on the Internet this weekend, alleging that Facebook is shutting down on March 15 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg “wants his old life back,” and desires to “put an end to all the madness.”

But mashable team have official confirmation from Facebook Director of Corporate Communications Larry Yu that the rumor is false. We asked him via e-mail if Facebook was shutting down on March 15, to which he responded, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness.” He added, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

Let’s think about this for a minute. Would Facebook decide to shut down the company just a few days after announcing a round of funding, consisting of $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, on a valuation of $50 billion?

The spurious report was started by a site to which we refuse to link, known for its reports of impending attacks of alien spaceships and false reports of a Michelle Obama pregnancy.

Reservoir !! 

Snips :

• Facebook
• Crunch base Profile

What's Going Wrong At Google ??

Can Google Get Its thaumaturgy Back ?? 

A spectre is haunting Mountain View. No, not bed bugs: bit rot. Google is in serious decline.

I don’t see how they can deny it. They have famously always been a data-driven organization, and the data is compelling. Business Insider’s list of the 15 biggest tech flops of 2010 cited no fewer than four from Google: Buzz, Wave, Google TV, and the Nexus One. Bizarre errors have erupted in Google Maps. Many of its best engineers are leaving. Influential luminaries like Vivek Wadhwa, Jeff Atwood, Marco Arment and Paul Kedrosky (way ahead of the curve) say their core search service is much degraded from its glory years, and the numbers bear this out; after years of unassailable dominance, Google’s search-market share is diminishing—it dropped an eyebrow-raising 1.2% just from October to November—while Microsoft’s Bing, whose UI Google tried and embarrassingly failed to copy earlier this year, is on the rise.

Even their money fount, AdWords, is problematic. An illustrative anecdote: I recently experimented with a $100 free certificate for my own pet app, and found my ad got stuck “In Review” indefinitely. According to users on AdWords’ discussion boards, this is common, and the only way to fix it is to file a help request. I did, and the problem was soon repaired—but what happened to the speedy algorithmic solutions for which Google is famous?

The general tone on the AdWords forums is exactly like that on those devoted to the other Google service I use a lot, App Engine: users on both frequently complain about the way Google neglects and/or outright ignores them. I like App Engine a lot, but it’s prone to sporadic bursts of inexplicable behaviour, and some developers are abandoning it because of Google’s perceived reluctance or inability to fix its bugs and quirks. Another example: a bug in Android’s default SMS app which sent text messages to incorrect recipients festered for six months until a spate of high-profile coverage finally forced them to fix it. How can they neglect problems like that in their only big hit of the last five years? 

Never mind don’t be evil—what happened to pay attention?

Once upon a time, Google was the coolest place for a techie to work. Not any more. While I can’t quantify this, I’m confident that most engineers will agree: somehow, over the last 18 months, their aura has faded and their halo has fallen. Once their arrogance was intimidating and awesome. Now it just seems clueless.

It’s not like they’re Yahoo!, halfway past the point of no return. Google is still a giant money machine full of brilliant engineers. Google Voice could be huge. If the rumors of their super-secret augmented-reality app are true, they have another hit in the wings. Even their self-driving cars make strategic sense to me. Still, the trajectory is clear; they’re in decline. They seem to have finally stopped believing their own press releases and realized that they have a problem—but is it too late? Has Google grown too big to succeed? I fear that the answer is yes.

Reservoir !!

Snips :

• The Anti-Google FAQ
• ihategoogle

Its collimate !!!

The Facebook-Microsoft Parallels !!

A computer prodigy drops out of Harvard and builds one of America’s hottest companies. He brings on an M.B.A. to help him think about things other than programming. He wants to keep his very profitable company private. But as his company grows, he begins distributing shares to his ever-increasing employee base. This gives his company more than 499 shareholders and forces him to consider an initial public offering. The investment bank Goldman Sachs plays a major role in the I.P.O.

This isn’t Mark Zuckerberg in 2011. It’s Bill Gates in 1986.

Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Gates was dealing with uncannily similar issues to the ones facing Mr. Zuckerberg today. And Goldman was wooing Mr. Gates and his decade-old Seattle software company, Microsoft, in much the same way that it has romanced Mr. Zuckerberg and his fellow Facebook executives.

(In case you missed it, Goldman has invested $450 million in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation and is raising a pool of capital from its clients to invest alongside the firm. All this likely makes Goldman the lead candidate to handle Facebook’s I.P.O., now expected sometime next year.)

In July 1986, Fortune magazine published a 5,500-word story by Bro Uttal about Microsoft’s I.P.O. process. Here’s a description of Microsoft’s then-revolutionary business: “Microsoft’s biggest hits are the PC-DOS and MS-DOS operating systems, the basic software that runs millions of I.B.M. personal computers and clones.”

And here’s Fortune on why Mr. Gates eventually capitulated, reasons that would seem eerily familiar to Mr. Zuckerberg: “To attract managers and virtuoso programmers, Gates had been selling them shares and granting stock options. By 1987, Microsoft estimated, over 500 people would own shares, enough to force the company to register with the S.E.C. Once registered, the stock in effect would have a public market, but one so narrow that trading would be difficult. Since it would have to register anyway, Microsoft might as well sell enough shares to enough investors to create a liquid market, and Gates had said that 1986 might be the year.”

Mr. Gates’s chief financial officer, Frank Gaudette, held a beauty contest to choose an investment bank to handle its debut. A few years earlier, Mr. Gates had recruited another business-minded executive, Steve Ballmer, to join the company.

“Among the major houses, Gaudette had been most impressed by Goldman Sachs, which tightly links its underwriting group with its stock traders and keeps close tabs on the identity of big institutional buyers,” Fortune wrote. “For those reasons, Gaudette thought Goldman would be especially good at maintaining an orderly market as Microsoft employees gradually cashed in their shares.”

Mr. Gaudette called Eff W. Martin, a young Goldman banker in San Francisco who had been calling on Microsoft for two years, reported Fortune. He invited Martin and his Goldman colleagues to a dinner in Seattle to meet Mr. Gates. The dinner was awkward, Fortune said, and “it was not until talk turned to pricing the company’s stock that Gates folded his arms across his chest and started rocking to and fro, a sure sign of interest. At the end of dinner, Martin, striving to conclude on a high note, gushed that Microsoft could have the ‘most visible initial public offering of 1986 — or ever.’”

“‘Well, they didn’t spill their food and they seemed like nice guys,’” Mr. Gates drawled to his colleagues afterward in the parking lot, according to Fortune. “‘I guess we should go with them.’”

On March 13, 1986, Microsoft had a hugely successful I.P.O. Priced at $21 a share, the stock spiked to $35.50 before closing at $27.75. The Microsoft chief financial officer called Seattle from the Goldman trading floor: “It’s wild! I’ve never seen anything like it — every last person here is trading Microsoft and nothing else.”

The I.P.O. put a $350 million value on Mr. Gates’s 45 percent stake, making him one of the wealthiest men in America at 30 years old.

About a year from now, if all goes as Facebook and Goldman plan, expect a similar scene at 200 West — the investment bank’s new state-of-the-art headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

We can see it now. The firm’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and his team of traders will be wearing hoodies in Mr. Zuckerberg’s honor. Mr. Zuckerberg, already jaded at 27, might not be there, but his No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg, a Harvard M.B.A., surely will.

Everyone will be happy, and very, very rich.

Source !!

Unexampled Feature from Google !!!

Watch Google Videos directly In Your Browser !!!

Google has launched a new feature in Google Docs that enables you to watch videos you’ve uploaded to your documents directly in the browser.

Go to Google Docs You will find the option as given below 

To watch a video, just click on it and press play. Google warns that the videos must be in a supported format, and that it takes some time to process newly uploaded videos (as well as some videos uploaded earlier last year), so they might not be immediately available for viewing.

Google Finally Revealed Its Android Honeycomb 3.0 !!!

Google Gives Us a Sneak Peek of Android 3.0 Honeycomb !!!

The past few weeks have been exciting ones for the Android team: They recently released Nexus S and Android 2.3, Gingerbread. But they haven’t stopped buzzing with excitement: today at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, they revealed Android 3.0, Honeycomb.

Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface. Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.

Honeycomb also features the latest Google Mobile innovations including Google Maps 5 with 3D interactions and offline reliability, access to over 3 million Google eBooks, and Google Talk, which now allows you to video and voice chat with any other Google Talk enabled device (PC, tablet, etc).

Please stay tuned for more Honeycomb news from the Zombies team. For now, you can get a taste of Honeycomb by checking out this video.

Source !!

Snips :

• Android
• Android.com

Just hear his voice !!! Its groovy !!!

Golden-Voiced Homeless Man Scores Job Offers After Video Goes Viral !!!

Before this week, the name “Ted Williams” most likely brought to mind the phrase “Teddy Ballgame.” Now, the name has become synonymous with “Golden-voiced,” as a homeless man with that moniker has shot to stardom as a result of his breathtaking vocal chords.

Recently, Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth III filmed a brief interview with the Brooklyn-born Williams, who — until recently — panhandled on the corner of a highway.

Yesterday, the video went viral, and has (at the time of this posting) racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube. This ascent is most likely due in no small part to the Reddit community, which took up the cause after Reddit user and Columbus-dweller “shiggiddie” posted the video to the site after hearing about the interview on a local radio show.

“I had already seen the immense good the Reddit community is capable of doing,” shiggiddie says. “I hoped that maybe through the community I might find out who this Ted Williams character is, and how we might be able to help him get on his feet with some work other redditors might want/need for their businesses, etc.”

The results were overwhelming: “I received anywhere from 70 to 80 job offers for Ted in my personal messages alone over the past day and a half, some coming from people claiming to represent the interests of nationwide radio programs, television shows, businesses looking for someone to do their voice systems, ads, ads and more ads, musicians wanting Ted to contribute his voice to their tracks, and even radio hosts wanting him to join their shows as a full-time jockey,” shiggiddie says.

“I haven’t even gotten to the news sources asking me for more information, of which I’d guess I received personal messages from at least 20 to 25.”

The video spread from boards like Reddit to viral culture blogs, leading to appearances on major news outlets — from print to radio to television.

In fact, the awestruck Williams recently appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, where he he tearfully told viewers that he’s on his way back to Brooklyn to reconnect with his 92-year-old mother. From the side of the highway to television to New York — that’s a pretty rapid and drastic progression.

But the trip back to BK isn’t the biggest opportunity that this turn of events has presented for Williams — his lightning-fast ascent to the viral video firmament has also garnered him job offers from the likes of the NFL and the Cleveland Cavaliers (and, by proxy, Quicken Loans). The Cavs also offered him a house.

Quicken Loans President Jay Farner heard about Williams’s great talent last night. “We’re working on a lot of marketing over here at the company, voiceover work, commercials and websites and all kinds of things for Quicken Loans and a variety of our companies who would need that. People heard the voice and thought that might be a great fit. And when I saw that he was in Ohio, I thought that was excellent because the Cavaliers are right there and we’ve got a Quicken Loans web center down there. We’re kind of partial to helping folks in the Midwest.”

Dan Gilbert, the principal owner of Cleveland Cavaliers, is also the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, so the companies tend to work together rather closely. Still, the job would mostly entail doing voiceovers for the Cavs’s arena.

When asked about the housing offer, Farner replied: “Heck, we’re in the mortgage business, we’re one of the largest lenders in America. Houses are something we know and do pretty well, we figured that it would make sense to find a home for him — a place he could get established, get on his feet. Hard to start a new job if you don’t have a place to call home.”

Williams hasn’t accepted the offer yet, but Farner says that the talented man seems excited by the prospect — and the feeling is mutual.

“When you’re looking for voice talent or someone to go out there and represent your brand, you could do all the focus groups in the world, you’re never going to get 4.5 million people to tell you someone has a great voice,” Farner says. “If 4.5 million people think a voice is great, that’s about the best focus group you could ever get.”

Source !!

Cyberspace Dominates the rest !!!

Internet Surpasses Television as Main News Source for Young Adults !!!

The Internet is now the main national and international news source for people ages 18 to 29, a study from the Pew Research Center reports.

In 2010, 65% of people younger than 30 cited the Internet as their go-to source for news, nearly doubling from 34% in 2007. The number who consider television as their main news source dropped from 68% to 52% during that time.

Of all 1,500 American adults surveyed, 41% say they get their national and international news from the Internet, up 17% from 2007. Sixty-six percent cite television — down from 74% — indicating the trend is spreading among other age groups.

Forty-eight percent of those 30-59 cite the Internet as their main news source, up from 32% in 2007, while television went down from 71% to 63%. Though the number of those in the 51-64 age group who consider television their main news source (71%) is about the same, those who turn to the Internet (34%) is nearly equal to the number who cite newspapers (38%). The amount of people 65 and older who get their news from the Internet has risen from 5% to 14%, but television remains the chief source for 79% of respondents.

These numbers fall in line with the rise of the personalized news stream online. Both Facebook’s News Feed and Twitter launched in summer 2006 but didn’t catch on until 2007. Both sites have seen explosive growth since 2008. Tweet counts have increased from 5,000 daily in 2007 to 90 million daily in 2010, while Facebook went from 30 million users in 2007 to more than 500 million users today.

In addition, the television viewership culture has shifted in the past few years. Between media streaming services on the web and, more recently, Internet-TV connection devices like Roku and Boxee, people have more viewing options than ever before. With the ability to personalize what news and entertainment you consume, these television watching methods have become more desirable for many.

Which is your preferred news source? Internet or television? Tell us in the comments below.

Source !!

Snips :

• Survey Reports

faceb$$k!!!

Facebook Raises $500 Million in Funding,

Now Worth $50 Billion !!

Facebook has received a massive new round of funding: $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, according to a new report.

Facebok has raised more than $800 million over five rounds of funding. With this round, the social network will have raised more than $1.3 billion. The New York Times says that the deal sets the company’s valuation at a whopping $50 billion. Facebook’s worth has fluctuated between $40 billion and $50 billion in the secondary markets for the past few weeks. In September, Facebook was worth between $23 billion and $33 billion and in November it was worth $41 billion.

As part of the deal, Goldman Sachs will help Facebook raise an additional $1.5 billion. To do this, the investment bank will create a “special purpose vehicle” that will allow others to invest in Facebook indirectly. This would help Facebook bypass a S.E.C. regulation that requires companies with more than 499 investors to disclose their financial results to the public.

Goldman Sachs will be a first-time investor in Facebook, while Russian venture capital firm Digital Sky Technologies had previously invested $200 million in the company Mark Zuckerberg built at a $10 billion valuation. According to the NYT report, Goldman Sachs has the option to sell $75 million of its stake to DST.

It’s unclear what Facebook will do with the money. It could cash out some of its employees and existing investors with that money or go on a hiring spree. It has so much money now that it will likely do both.

Source !!

Snips :

• Facebook

Superpower of MVP :)

What is Mobile Virtualization and Why is it Important??

Virtualization is often thought of as not the most sexy of topics.

But what do you say after watching the above video ?? what it can do continues to fascinate, especially in context of the larger mobile marketplace and what it means for people who use smartphones and lots of apps.

Carrying two mobile phones is not unusual. People will often need one device for work and a second for personal use. Virtualization on a mobile device wold mean just one smartphone with virtual partitions so people could use it for both for work and their personal lives.

It would mean that people could download a far greater variety of apps. And it has the potential to drop the cost of a smartphone for the end user.

What is Mobile Virtualization?

According to Open Kernel Labs, there are some differences between enterprise virtualization and its mobile counterpart. But the virtualization technology is by definition pretty much the same. Just as a PC can be isolated to run separate apps, so can a smartphone.

The problem? Current mobile processors lack virtualization support in the hardware. People can not add the virtualization to their own device. It has to be done by the manufacturer. That means full integration may take some time happen.

Dimitri Sirota is co-founder of Layer 7 Technologies. The company integrates data centers to the Internet and cloud-based systems. It supplies on-premise hardware, software, virtualization technologies and cloud services. For example,the company works with telecomnmunications companies to provide access to APIs for developers.

Sirota says that an operating system like Android is not viewed as that secure. The apps have access to everything on the handset and Android doesn't screen them. Virtualizing creates a completely segmented environment where secure apps can run without worry about frivolous apps getting acccess:

That's why U.S. President Barack Obama can use a Blackberry.

Sirota:

"Different profiles (corporate versus personal) need different security protocols--take President Obama's BlackBerry, for instance. He can have highly locked-down apps running in one virtual environment on his phone that allow him to communicate with his Chief of Staff. He can also have his fun apps on the same device, but they'll never be able to get access or break into a more secure app because of the complete segmentation of profiles."

Why is Mobile Virtualization Important?

Security: Although this is not a major concern for consumers now, it will become increasingly important as mobile banking and other similar applications gain popularity. Also, as open operating systems such as Android become more and more ubiquitous, mobile devices will become more vulnerable to hacker attacks and malware. Mobile Virtualization can help protect the critical data on those devices.

For Work and Play: Think of this as a personal world and corporate world on one device that meets the security needs of corporate requirements. In addition, consumers will be able to access their favorite applications for a variety of platforms (Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc.) on the same phone. It addresses consumer behavior preferences - corporate employees who want to "bring their own device" to work, will be able to do so, while still meeting the needs of IT.

Smartphone Market: It drives the market through cost savings. According to analyst firm, Vision Mobile, smartphone platforms account for less than 20 percent of the more than 620 million handsets shipped globally in the first half of 2010, while more than 80 percent of total shipments are driven by feature phones. Through hardware consolidation, mobile virtualization lets manufacturers provide smart phone functionality for the cost of a feature phone. This is especially important for the consumers, in most of the world, who cannot afford smartphone prices today.

Mobile virtualization is emerging in importance. As apps proliferate,so will malware attacks on mobile devices. Virtualization provides the security from those attacks. But almost more so is the need for better efficiencies in terms of costs and consolidations.

A mobile phone that can run multiple types of apps at a fraction of the cost will mean the proliferation of the device to millions of users.

But for now, the challenge is getting the virtualization on the hardware. That will happen as the efficiencies and security issues emerge as important factors for market advantage.

Source !!!

Snips :

• VMware
• MVP