I quit posting web 2.0 updates because the number of variations on the same theme quickly began to bore me. Sort like listening to a cliched fugue. But I find the NYT story on Google and IBM’s plans for cloud computing pretty exciting. This will allow some heavy duty data crunching that can better process and explore the unlimited information pools across the internet.
This is mostly magic to my little math-challenged brain, but the implications rock me Amadeus baby.
Google’s stated aim of cataloging and organizing information is now being mixed with humanitarian causes. According to the Times online:
Google Earth, the search engine’s online mapping service, has updated its images of the Darfur region in Sudan in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of people living there.
In partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google has published new, high-resolution aerial photographs of the area, showing destroyed villages, displaced people and refugee camps. In some places, the resolution is high enough to show the burnt ruins of individual houses.
On one level this is an amazing use of technology to reveal a catastrophic situation that the government consistently denies. On another level, this raises questions about Google’s role.
“It raises the question of what their responsibility is to decide what to cover,” Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said. “This mirrors the type of things that news organisations deal with: deciding how much resources to spend on an issue and what you cover.”
So Google is moving into the role of gatekeeper, deciding what to highlight and how to highlight specific events, places, etc. While it raises interesting possibilities, I figure if Google oversteps the line, the market will help keep them in check.
Google was recently criticised for replacing post-Hurricane Katrina imagery on its map portal with views of the city from before the storm. The company said its use of the pre-Katrina imagery occurred as part of routine enhancements and denied that the move involved political considerations, but it replaced the later images in response to the criticism.
In another step toward the tower of Redmond, Google launched the Google Apps Premier Edition for businesses.
Email started feeling like a task, a drain, a distraction. After drowning in hundreds of unread emails, I decided that I couldn’t handle it anymore. I decided I’d start using the gmail labels. By thinking of the labels like tags, I just started creating tags for everything I could think of.
Creating filters in Gmail are much simpler than the exhausting Outlook process. You can create a new filter in a matter of seconds using from, to, subject, and keywords. Then you can choose to bypass the inbox and immediately archive it or delete it. At the same, you can set up a rule to immediately tag it. Plus, when you enter the filter criteria (to, from, subject, keyword), it immediately pulls of all emails with that criteria (like a search). So you can choose to apply rule to all those emails instantly.
Now everytime a new mail comes to the inbox, I either mark as spam, create filter, or read and respond if I don’t want a filter. This has reduced my time in the email box while helping me bringing important emails to the surface faster. Now I use Jeremy’s blog read concept by choosing what tags deserve daily attention, weekly attention or monthly attention.
NYT offers an interesting update on Google Checkout.
Here are my highlights: Aggressively pursuing merchants, Google Checkout waived transaction fees in November (through the end of 2007), and it has also been Checkout users $10 off $30 purchases at many e-commerce sites and, in some cases, $20 off $50 orders. In fact, Google is prepared to lose money on every transaction for the next year. Why?
They see long term payoffs in expanding their base of advertising.
“It’s a way to incentivize more merchants to join our network,” said Benjamin Ling, a product manager for Checkout. “We want everyone who sells online to be a Google advertiser.”
The advantages for merchants include current savings, and a model that helps merchants generate more sales leads by increasing click-through rates.
Read the article at NYT.
Not that I’m encouraging anyone to spend more money this season, but if you’re interested, Larry Chase sent out a list of interesting of shopping sites that you might want to check out. I think I’ve written about some of this before, but here are the highlights:
FruCall – One quick call tells you if an online price beats the store price. “Frucall not only reads back the best online prices to you, but it also allows you to buy items directly from online merchants while you’re on the phone!”
CyberMonday – Shop.org set up this site to show all the various deals online today.
Dealcatcher – Comprehensive list of online and offline deals.
Like.com – A shopping search engine. This is an interesting concept that captures photos of celebrities and allows you to search fashion items they are wearing and find similar items for sale.
Shop Local – Find all the deals in your neck o’ the woods.
Pronto – Named “”Best Online Price Comparison Site” in 2006 by Kiplinger’s, this site searches product reviews to create an overall product rating and then it connects you to various online merchants.
ThisNext – This a social shopping site that lets you connect with like-minded to find their recommendations on specific products.
Kaboodle – Another social shopping site that lets you organize your wish lists from various sites on the web.
Bidnearby – Find the closest ebay auctions to your zip code area and save or avoid shipping.
Google Checkout – It’s growing.
It’s official, the United States is full of Internet Addicts. Yipes! I think I better spend a few hours googling that.
Google updated its spreadsheets and documents interface this weekend. I like the new spread better than the Writely look before.
via Bits of News
Word on the street (WSJ) is that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about 1.6 billion. This will be Google’s largest acquisition to date. Not bad for the YouTube guys, considering they’re just about a year and half old (Feb 2005). Looks like Mark Cuban will have to eat his words.
via Drudge
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