Category: Emerging Tech

Emerging Trends

Google Tests Self-Driving Cars

Thanks – or perhaps just due to – Google, the era of the autonomous car may be approaching. This weekend, the company announced that it’s been developing self-driving vehicles, and the experiment has already achieved results that imply success.

It seems that seven cars were outfitted with Google’s new tech quite some time ago, and Sebastian Thrun, who holds the title "Distinguished Software Engineer," wrote on the Official Google Blog, "They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles."

Some other important facts: the cars are considered legal (a person stays in the driver’s seat, ready to take over if necessary), they’re not custom-made (the fleet consists of six Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT), and the only accident that’s occurred happened when a human driver managed to rear-end a test vehicle stopped at a traffic light.

Google thinks self-driving cars will be able to reduce energy consumption by eliminating unproductive behaviors. The company’s tech might cut the number of people hurt and killed in accidents, too, and of course the occupants of self-driving cars could take their eyes off the road to do other things.

Still, this isn’t necessarily a development that should thrill everyone. Some analysts and shareholders are concerned that Google’s branching out into yet another odd area of research where there’s no obvious profit angle.

Then there’s the classic "if Microsoft made your car" list of concerns to consider.

Finally, it’s a simple fact that many people enjoy driving, and have no desire to be chauffeured around. Heck, your humble author hasn’t even taken advantage of cruise control more than three or four times, and plenty of people are willing to pay several times the cost of a basic vehicle for a sports car that provides a more "connected" experience.

In any event, John Markoff, who interviewed several people connected with Google’s project, wrote, "Even the most optimistic predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away."

October 11, 2010
New York State Educational System Goes Google

New York is America’s fifth-largest state by population, and soon enough, most or all of the individuals who attend school there will be put in touch with Google. Google announced this morning that Google Apps has secured New York state as another partner.

This is a big, big step for Google. Previous arrangements concerning Google Apps and school systems only involved Oregon (the 27th-largest state by population), Iowa (30th), Colorado (22nd), and Maryland (19th), introducing a total of about eight million students and teachers to Google Apps to date.

In contrast, a post on the Official Google Blog described the fresh development as "a new K-12 initiative that will bring powerful communication and collaboration tools to the more than 3.1 million students and hundreds of thousands of teachers throughout New York state."

Then, by way of explanation, the post continued, "New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), in partnership with the New York State Teacher Centers and associated Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), the New York State teacher unions and New York State professional organizations, will offer Google Apps access, training and support to 697 public school districts, as well as all non-public and charter schools, across New York."

Unfortunately, neither Google nor anyone representing New York estimated how much money this move might save the school system, but in any event, this could act as a catalyst for getting other states to embrace Google Apps.

Going by population, Texas and California are probably Google’s main two targets.

October 5, 2010
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Announces Startup:Education

As noted earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is donating $100 million to public schools, starting in Newark, New Jersey. He’s set up a foundation called Startup:Education.

"Using my own Facebook stock, I’m creating the Startup: Education foundation with over $100 million to invest in educating and improving the lives of young people," sayz Zuckerberg in a blog post after announcing the news officially on Oprah. " I’m also challenging others who want to improve education in America to match my contributions."

"I’m excited to start this new project," he says. "I’ve been very lucky to have the education and opportunities I’ve had in my life and I look forwarding to participating in giving the 40,000+ students in Newark the same opportunities. Together, we can support a bold and thoughtful program for improving education, starting by making Newark a symbol of excellence."

As Facebook’s PR team is happy to point out, Zuckerberg has received a lot of praise for the move, including some from Bill Gates, how is somewhat portrayed as Zuckerberg’s idol in The Accidental Billionaires (the book that The Social Network is based upon). "Thank you, Mark, for this incredible gift to improve education. Your involvement in the years ahead — your thinking, your energy — will be even more important than your resources," says Gates. "Improving education in this country is the key to its future, making it a just place, achieving the full potential of all students. There’s a lot to learn. Technology has a role to play, more resources, backing leaders like you have here. I’m excited to be on this journey together and thank you so much."

The foundation’s first project will be to improve academic achievement for Newark students and create "a national model for rewarding excellence in education."

Newark Mayor Cory Booker (who Conan fans may remember from his banning of Conan O’Brien from the state of New Jersey) has also announced the creation of the Newark Education and Youth Development Fund, a separate non-profit organization whose goal is to secure an additional $100 million to match the challenge grant available through Zuckerberg’s foundation, as well as an additional $50 million to serve disaffected youth.

Zuckerberg’s move is timed as The Social Network nears its release painting Facebook’s CEO in what many perceive to be a negative light (read our review here).

September 24, 2010
Google: 3 Million Businesses Have “Gone Google”

Google announced today that over 3 million businesses have "gone Google", meaning they’ve switched to Google Apps. in addition to that, Google says over 30 million individual users within businesses, schools, and organizations are using the company’s messaging and collaboration tools.

These are a couple of the announcements Google has made today as it hosts CIOs and IT professionals in Paris at its cloud computing event, Google Atmosphere. The company also announced two-step verification, which was discussed here, and mobile editing in Google Docs on Android and iPad.

The mobile functionality will be coming to users around the world in the next few weeks, the company says.

"Only cloud computing is able to deliver the whole package of productivity-enhancing collaboration, superior reliability and virtually unlimited scale at a price that’s affordable for any size organization," says Dave Girouard, President, Google Enterprise. "Our Atmosphere event is a nice opportunity to step back and fully appreciate the power of the cloud with customers and future customers alike."

Last week, Google Apps partner lead Scott McMullan shared some thoughts with us about growing customer interest in the Google Apps marketplace, which should only continue to increase interest in Google Apps itself. The Marketplace has over 200 installable apps. With the number of businesses using Google Apps growing, developers are likely to keep this number increasing as well.

September 20, 2010
Google Launches 2-Step Verification for Google Apps

Google has introduced a more secure sign-in capability for Google Apps accounts with two-step verification. The company says this "significantly increases the security of the cloud."

"Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use," says Google Apps Director of Security Eran Feigenbaum. "When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. This makes it much more likely that you’re the only one accessing your data: even if someone has stolen your password, they’ll need more than that to access your account. You can also indicate when you’re using a computer you trust and don’t want to be asked for a verification code from that machine in the future."

Admins for Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions can activate two-step verification from the English version of the Admin Control Panel now. Standard Edition users will get it in the coming months. Google says it will offer it to individual Google users in the coming months.

Google is also open sourcing its mobile authentication app, so companies can customize it.

September 20, 2010
Print from the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch with Apple’s Airprint

Apple announced that its releasing a beta version of Airprint wireless printing for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch as part of the iOS Develope Program. The service will be included in the iOS 4.2 software update in November.

What AirPrint does, is automatically find printers on local networks and print text, photos and graphics to them wirelessly over Wi-Fi. There is no need to install drivers or download software.

HP’s existing and upcoming ePrint enabled printers will be the first to support Airprint. Compatible printers include: the HP Photosmart, Officejet, Officejet Pro and LaserJet Pro series ePrint enabled printers.

"AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing. "iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC."

"We’re pleased to work with Apple to bring Apple’s AirPrint to our fall lineup of ePrint printers in time for the holiday shopping season," said Vyomesh Joshi, HP executive VP, Imaging and Printing Group. "Making it easy for our customers to print anytime, anywhere, is a key priority for HP. iPad, iPhone and iPod touch customers are going to love how easy it is to print using our new range of ePrint printers, creating high-quality printed pages in an instant."

Apple says Airprint will support a wide range of inkjet and laser printers. iOS 4.2 devices can print to printers shared through Macs or PCs.

AirPrint will work with iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (second generation and later).

Google has a similar offering called CloudPrint, but it’s not yet available. It will be supported by web apps, Android apps, iPhone apps, Chrome OS, etc. – "any type of application" Google says.

September 15, 2010
Google Docs Gets New File Conversion Feature
Google has announced a new file conversion feature in Google Docs that lets you convert files that are already uploaded to your document list into a Google Docs format, as opposed to only being able to do so upon upload.

For example, you can convert PDFs to text using Google’s Optical Character Recogniton technology. Files that can be converted include:
- For spreadsheets: .xls, .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tsb
- For documents: .doc, .docx, .html, plain text (.txt), .rtf
- For presentations: .ppt, .pps
- For OCR: .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf
To use the feature, simply right click on the file and click "make a Google Docs copy".

Google also released a new curve tool for drawings in Google Docs. It lets users create curves based on cardinal splines. More on this here.
August 10, 2010
Maryland Educational System Embraces Google Apps

Much to the disappointment of students (and perhaps teachers) everywhere, a new school year will soon start. But Google’s celebrating something related to education this afternoon, as it’s secured the Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium as yet another Google Apps partner.

Miriam Schneider wrote on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, "[W]e’re happy to announce that The Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC) will make Google Apps for Education available to 1.4 million students in the state. MEEC is comprised of the University System of Maryland, Maryland Higher Education Commission and Maryland Department of Education, and provides software resources and services to its 194 members across the state."

There’s more, too. Schneider later continued, "In addition to Google Apps, this agreement also enables MEEC member institutions – for example University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) – to license Google Postini Services such as Google Message Security, for use with the existing email infrastructure to enhance Spam filtering and email security for students, faculty and staff."

So it seems that all sorts of people will soon get an introduction to a significant array of Google’s services.

Anyway, Maryland’s move means that Google has secured deals with a total of four states. And since the time between announcements has decreased a bit, it’s possible a sort of domino effect is starting to take hold.

It should be interesting to see which state decides to try Google’s software next (and how long it takes to do so).

August 7, 2010
Top Tech Blogs in The UK During August
Next week, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing the rankings for August 2010 of their lists of the top blogs in the many categories under which they’re classified.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been posting an advance look each month at the top 20 or 30 technology blogs in the UK from the data my friends at Wikio have let me see. Last month, that advance look also included the top 30 online marketing blogs in the UK.

I’ve just received the latest details for both categories:

Top 30 Tech Blogs in the UK: August 2010
Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Technology Blogs in the UK

Top 30 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK: August 2010
Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK

If you want to suggest others blogs for inclusion in Wikio’s tech or online marketing lists that aren’t there already, either let me know or apply on the Wikio website.

Comments
August 5, 2010
Microsoft Names Impressive New Cloud Customers

Microsoft’s cloud computing division has scored a significant victory. Three of them, even, as this morning, the company was able to announce that Dow Chemical, Hyatt Hotels, and the University of Georgia will use Microsoft cloud computing solutions.

A Dow VP indicated in an official statement that Microsoft’s experience and expertise contributed to his corporation’s decision. That’s arguably a bit of a snub to Google, which is making every effort to catch up to and overtake Microsoft in this field.

Meanwhile, the CIO of Hyatt Hotels complimented Microsoft’s flexibility. Also, if anyone’s counting, Hyatt said this development will affect around 40,000 deskbound employees, plus perhaps another 17,000 workers who don’t have full-time access to a computer.

Finally, the CIO of the University of Georgia said, "With Live@edu, we believe we will have a best-in-class communications and collaboration infrastructure . . ." And for the record, something like 85,000 University of Georgia faculty, students, and staff should be using of that.

Again, then, Microsoft has scored some big wins, and Google – with the delay in L.A. representing its most recent cloud-related headline – seems to have lost this round.

Microsoft’s stock is down 0.06 percent at the moment, a little behind the Dow (which is up 0.07 percent), but ahead of the Nasdaq (which is down 0.28 percent).

July 29, 2010
Google Launches Google Apps For Government

Google has introduced a new Government Edition of Google Apps. It includes all of the features of other Google Apps editions, but adds policy and security features. Google says it was designed with guidance from the federal government, as well as the Cities of Los Angeles and Orlando.

Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and Calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for government customers.

The company also announced that Google Apps is the first cloud app suite to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. government. Kripa Krishnan, Technical Program Manager on Google Apps for Government explains:

The FISMA law applies to all information systems in use by U.S. federal government agencies to help ensure they’re secure. The federal government’s General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorization to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation. This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the cloud with confidence.

Google Apps for Government is available for any federal, state or local government in the United States.

I wonder if Google recognizes the irony of the announcement in the wake of one of the biggest government data leaks in the country’s history.

July 26, 2010
Rackspace Teams Up with NASA on Open Source Cloud Project

Rackspace and NASA are collaborating on an open source cloud platform aimed at "fostering the emergence of standards and cloud interoperability." The platform is called OpenStack.

Rackspace is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products, and NASA is contributing its Nebula Cloud Platform. From there, the two will actively collaborate on joint technology development.

"Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand" said Chris Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. "To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source"

"We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies" said Lew Moorman, president, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. "We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres"

Rackspace says that using the components of the OpenStack initiative, organizations will be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code that is currently in production, serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

July 26, 2010
Some Guy Says He Owns the Majority of Facebook

Facebook has found itself the subject of a lawsuit from a guy named Paul Ceglia who claims to own an 84% stake in the company. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2009, New York’s Attorney General accused him of defrauding customers of his wood-pellet fuel company.

Of course this is not the first time Facebook has defended itself from claims about its origins. There have been books written about it (not to mention an upcoming film), but this one kind of came out of nowhere, and the guy’s claims to appear to fall in line with more well-known accounts of the company’s founding.

A lot of irritated iPhone 4 owners are calling for the company to issue a recall, and PR experts are calling one inevitable according to Cult of Mac. Kevin C. Tofel at GigaOm suggests they just hand out free cases to correct the problem. This uproar was amplified by Consumer Reports declining to recommend the buying of the device this week. According to various reports, Apple has been deleting threads talking about the subject from its message boards.

Microsoft made another handful of cloud-related announcements from its WorldWide Partner Conference today.

Amazon had a cloud-related announcement of its own as it introduced Cluster Compute Instances for EC2. These are described as a new instance type specifically designed for high-performance computing (HPC) applications and other demanding network-bound applications.

Microsoft launched its new Facebook integration for Outlook in the latest example of email and social media coming together in a single user experience.

July 13, 2010
More Cloud Announcements from Microsoft

Yesterday Microsoft had plenty of news coming out of its Worldwide Partner Conference, and today the news continues.

The company’s new channel chief, Jon Roskill, addressed the Microsoft partner community for the first time, and unveiled business strategies and resources to help partners utilize the cloud (a major theme of Microsoft’s during the event).

"The industry is at an inflection point, and Microsoft is leading the charge through what will be one of the biggest industry transformations of our time," said Roskill. "Partners have always been fundamental to Microsoft’s business, and we are committed to helping our partners adapt and find the right cloud opportunities so we can grow and succeed together."

During the keynote, Roskill detailed partner opportunity guides for cloud services, the new Microsoft Cloud Essentials Pack and Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Program designation, as well as new solution incentives for partners. More from Roskill here.

Andy Lees, senior VP of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business, announced that Windows Phone 7 will be complemented in the cloud by a new Windows Phone Live site. This will include a "Find My Phone" feature that lets users find and manage a missing phone with map, ring, lock and erase capabilities (BlackBerry just unveiled a similar security app as well).

Also today, Microsoft is launching Practice Accelerator aimed at making training and offering IP more accessible to partners, and Intuit is developing an SDK for Windows Phone 7.

July 13, 2010
eBay Turns to Microsoft for Cloud Computing

Microsoft and eBay made a joint announcement this morning, declaring that eBay will be one of Microsoft’s first customers for its Windows Azure cloud computing platform appliance. eBay will incorporate Azure into two of its data centers.

"Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the Windows Azure platform appliance shows they are committed to world-class cloud computing solutions. eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation software-as-a-service-based applications with our platform’s architecture, scale and reliability," said James Barrese, eBay VP of technology. "Joint engineering on the Windows Azure platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our user experience through a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution."

"eBay has one of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, meeting the wide-ranging needs of customers around the world. We are thrilled to work with such a technology and business leader as we help foster the new era of cloud computing with the Windows Azure platform appliance," said Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.

The companies will deploy the Windows Azure platform appliance sometime this year.

July 12, 2010
OnLive – A Cloud Gaming Service Launches

The evolution of gaming has taken interesting turns in its relatively short history. We’ve gone from arcade machines, to home consoles, with the latest breakthrough being downloadable gaming content. OnLive, is a gaming service which looks to be pushing the boundaries yet again; with cloud gaming.

Will OnLive be a successful venture? tell us

The OnLive service was announced at the Game Developers Conference last year, and since there has been wide speculation as to how successful they’ll be with their plans. This week, we go from speculation to finally seeing the service in action. Before getting into the details, you might be curious as to how the service works.

OnLive works the same way as cloud storage does for accessing files. Games are hosted on a server and players access content through these servers. Let’s say you wanted to play the game: Batman Arkham Asylum. Instead of going to a store to buy the disc, or download it, OnLive will allow you to simply click on a link and have the game loaded instantly. Batman: Arkham Asylum will then pop up on your screen and you’re on your way.

Game saves will be hosted through these servers as well, so when you’re done playing a game you can pick up right where you left off. All with a simple click.

With the synopsis I provided above, you’d think OnLive would be a successful venture. The problem is everything I’ve explained has been simple theory. The question now remains; how will it work in practice?

Luckily, this week we get to find out as the service has officially launched. You can signup for the ‘Founding Members Program‘ which provides your 1st year free, with a $4.95/month charge for the second year. When they say "free", it means you have access to demos, community features, ‘friending’, chat, and spectating. Actual gameplay will require a separate purchase.

This separate purchase is called a ‘PlayPass’. Each game will have its own PlayPass, so to play Batman Arkham Asylum you’ll need to purchase its PlayPass. You can purchase a Full Playpass, which provides unlimited access throughout the game’s lifetime on the OnLive service. You can also choose to ‘rent’ the game for three or five days. OnLive has guaranteed games on the service will be supported for at least three years.

As of now you can connect to OnLive using a PC or Mac. They’re developing a MicroConsole TV Adapter to bring their service to the living room. No release date has been announced as of yet.

Obviously, OnLive is pushing the boundaries of gaming to places never attempted. The problem being, it might be ahead of its time. Streaming a game through a server to players’ broadband connection is a strain which could cause all sorts of lag. Potentially causing a game to be unplayable.

Stever Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO, has voiced the potential of the service, along with the potential problems,

"Despite the enormous potential of OnLive technology, it is important to emphasize that the OnLive Game Service is a very different way to experience videogames. We are using the Internet and computers in ways that have never been tried before and, like any brand new technology, you can expect a few bumps on take off until we reach cruising altitude and achieve a smooth flight. OnLive has been tested in an enormous variety of locations using a vast number of combinations of computers, ISPs, displays and input devices. Even so, there are endless possible combinations. So while most OnLive testers report good results with their gameplay experience, we still run into situations where the user may have to take some action (e.g. reset a cable modem or use a different mouse), or unique situations that we have not yet accounted for and require further changes to OnLive technology. "

The success of the service will really boil down to two things; the frequency of lag or other technical problems, and price. They’ve announced the monthly free will be $4.95 a month to simply access OnLive (with the Founding Member Discount, anyway). What they haven’t provided is how much the PlayPasses for the various games will cost. If they set the price points too high, then you’re charging people a monthly fee along with another charge which might be too great for players to handle.

The evolution of gaming has been started by lofty ideas, and goals much like OnLive is presenting. The potential of the service is too great to ignore, but so are the foreseeable problems along with it. Whatever happens, cloud gaming is certainly something to keep an eye on.

Will you sign up for OnLive? tell us

June 18, 2010
Augmented Reality App to Provide Greater Value to Local Businesses

It’s a very interesting time for local businesses. Mobile apps are opening many different opportunities for them to be discovered and new and creative ways. Likewise opportunities for engaging with customers and providing them with offers are becoming increasingly apparent.

Layar, which makes a pretty useful augmented reality app, announced Layar Stream today, which will fuel the discovery of augmented reality content that is available around you.

First, a little about Layar’s app itself. It already has more than 1.6 million users, and serves 1.2 million augmented objects a day. Over 600 layers are published on the Layar Platform with over 2000 in development. Layers within the app let smartphone users point their phone in any given direction to find items as diverse as nearby restaurants and bars, Twitterers, crime spots, sports and events, apartments for rent…you name it. Some layers are free and some are paid.

What the Layar Stream will do is generate a stream out of the augmented objects that are available around you. With so many layers in development, this will likely become an increasingly important element of tapping into the ones that you will find useful.

"Layar Stream is the necessary building block to make Augmented Reality part of every day life," says CEO Raimo van der Klein "There is a whole augmented world out there that is waiting to be discovered. You just need to tap into Layar Stream"

The Layar Stream will be available in the next version of the Layar app to be launched later this month. It will go to Android first, and then iPhone.

With iPhone (not to mention the iPad) maintaining a great deal of popularity, and Android usage rapidly growing, you can see where this app might provide great value to local businesses.

May 7, 2010
Amazon Hopes to Drive 3D Sales Via Consumer Education

Amazon has taken the initiative to educate consumers about 3D technology for the home, so it can sell more products that fall into that category. Still, for the home 3D technology space at large, this may prove to be a helpful act, as Amazon obviously plays a huge role in retail.

"While 3D is on the minds of a lot of customers, many are confused about this new technology and what they need to do in order to watch full HD 3D TV or movies, play 3D video games or use 3D on their computers," said Ben Hartman, director of Home Electronics at Amazon.com. "Our goal with the Amazon 3D 101 customer education center is to provide our customers with easy-to-understand information that will help demystify this new technology."

"We also provide product details to help customers figure out which 3D products best fit their individual needs," he adds. "We will continue to expand and evolve this customer education center as new 3D products and content are released."

Amazon’s educational resources for 3D include:

– Educational videos that help customers easily understand what 3D is and how it works

– Buying guides aimed at helping customers find everything they need to create the best 3D experience at home

– Interactions with the Amazon 3D team and other customers through Amazon discussions boards

– Frequently asked questions updated on a regular basis

– An interactive, intuitive layout that allows customers to easily access and find information

Just how big 3D is going to get is frequently speculated upon, but there’s no question that widespread adoption will not occur without some understanding of what all is involved, which is why besides being a marketing tool for Amazon, this education center could be a useful resource for those tinkering with the idea of purchasing 3D electronics.

April 26, 2010
Google Cloud Print in the Works for Printing from Chrome OS

If computing is going to the cloud, does that include printing? It does in Google’s plan. The company has introduced preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that would allow any desktop, web, or mobile app on any device to print to any printer that the user sets up.

"Rather than rely on the local operating system (or drivers) to print, apps can use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs," explains product manager Mike Jazayeri. "Google Cloud Print will then be responsible for sending the print job to the appropriate printer with the particular options the user selected, and returning the job status to the app."

It’s important to understand that Google Cloud Print is in the early stages of development, and there’s no telling when it might become available, but Google has released all the documentation and code as part of its open source Chromium and Chromium OS projects.

My guess is that they will want to make something available before too long, as the release of the Google Chrome OS devices gets closer. In case you don’t remember, that’s Google’s web-based operating system, on which all applications on a device are run from the cloud.

"While the emergence of cloud and mobile computing has provided users with access to information and personal documents from virtually any device, today’s printers still require installing drivers which makes printing impossible from most of these new devices. Developing and maintaining print subsystems for every combination of hardware and operating system– from desktops to netbooks to mobile devices — simply isn’t feasible," says Jazayeri. "Since in Google Chrome OS all applications are web apps, we wanted to design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today."

Google says it will have more information to share about which Google products will use Google Cloud Print in the coming months. The company will eventually offer an API for any app to use it.

The company expects "cloud aware" printers to become standard, although it acknowledges that none exist today. Google says it will engage with the printer OEM community in the coming months to help drive the effort forward.

For regular printers, users will be able to install a print proxy on their PCs to enable functionality with Google Cloud Print.

April 16, 2010
Google Offers $5.7 Million In Research Funding

Google said today it is increasing its funding for 12 university projects to further advance research in areas the company is interested in developing.

Google Focused Research Awards, totaling $5.7 million, include four categories: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.

"These are all areas in which Google is already deeply invested, and yet there is a long way to go. We’re excited to see what these projects contribute to the body of research in these important areas," wrote Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives, Google.

"These unrestricted grants are for two to three years, and the recipients will have the advantage of access to Google tools, technologies and expertise."

Related Articles:

> Google Profiles Go to the SERPs

> Google Launches Social Search Experiment

> Can Search Engine Optimization Survive Google?

February 2, 2010
10 Details About How Google Handles Natural Language Search

Google has posted a t hought-provoking piece to the Official Google Blog, discussing at length, Google’s system for understanding synonyms in search. As author Steven Baker says, "An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers."

Google considers understanding human language to be one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence, and the key to returning the best possible search results. While it is far from perfect now, Google has invested a great deal of time into this (5 years of research to be exact).

To cut to the chase, here are some things pertaining to Google’s handling of synonyms that you should keep in mind:

1. Google contantly monitors its system for handling synonyms with regard to search result relevance.

2. Google says synonyms affect 70% of user searches across over 100 languages.

3. For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improve search results, Google has only found one "truly bad" synonym.

4. Google does not normally fix bad synonyms by hand, but rather makes changes to its algorithms to try and correct the problem. "We hope it will be fixed automatically in some future changes," Baker says.

5. Google has recently made a change to how its synonyms are displayed: in SERP snippets, terms are bolded, just like the actual words you searched for.

6. Google uses "many techniques" to extract synonyms. Its systems analyze perabytes of data to build "an intricate understanding of what words can mean in different contexts"

7. Some words or initials can have tons of different meanings, and Google uses other words in the query to help determine the correct ones. For example, there are over 20 possible meanings for the term "GM" that Google’s system knows something about.

8. Google includes variants on terms (such as singular and plural versions) within its "umbrella of synonyms".

9. Google still makes mistakes with synonyms.

10. You can turn off a synonym in a search by adding a "+" before the term or by putting the words in quotation marks.

Google wants feedback on algorithm mistakes. They’ll take it through the web search help center forum, or through a Twitter hashtag: #googlesyns.

It will be interesting to see how far Google progresses in the area of natural language search, because Baker is absolutely right in that it is a key to providing more relevant results. If they can understand exactly what we want from our language, without us having to tweak it too much, that will be a tremendous stride for search. Instead of us trying to figure out what Google wants us to say, Google would just understand what we say. Luckily people have gotten much better at searching over the years, learning to enter longer, more specific queries.

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January 20, 2010