Facebook competes with Google

Based on the article found on the CNN technology page it's easy to see that as the web further progresses, old and dominate web sites like Google can and will eventually receive great competition. Sometimes this competition, however, comes from an unlikely source. As social media like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter continues to take over the world wide web, newer ways to look at finding relevant web pages begins to take affect.

While there is a massive amount of data compiled by these social media sites, they are often not indexed and difficult to search for. Facebook is trying to create an efficient way to compile all of this data as well as tie it into everyday search querying like a typical search engine of today. This would ideally provide search relevant material that could also compare the query with your friends and what they are searching or friending at that moment.

Google is still being Google and looking for new ways to progress and stay ahead of the market. Currently they are talking of a deal with Twitter where Google would display Twitter results on their search engine like it already has Google Adwords. This article states that the place a user still spends most of his or her time is in their inbox, and Google already has this advantage over Facebook with its Gmail email system. However popular Facebook might seem, I still doubt they will be able to trump Google anytime soon.

Google New Site for Data Request

Do you wanna find out which governments are hassling Google for user information, well Google recently has established a new site;named Government requests, for this purpose. This new site displays a map of the entire world and it shows the different countries that have given Google and YouTube government requests to either provide user data and information or removal of content.

Google says thats all of the information is not perfect to give complete detail of all the requests. This is due to the fact that one government can ask for many different users or removal of one or more URL's, but this information still gives a pretty clear view of how many requests the company gets and from where the request comes from.

The country that asks for the most requests is Brazil with 3,683 data requests and 291 content removal requests. Coming up in second is the United States with 3,580 data requests and 123 removal requests. But then the requests from countries drops in data requests with the United Kingdom and India coming up with 1,166 and 1,061.

Government Request Site

Google does not ignore these requests and they stated that they have partially or fully complied with approximately 82.5% of these requests. And Google is quoted in their blog post as stating that"it hopes the new Government requests site "will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe. We also hope that this is just the first step toward increased transparency about those actions across the technology and communications industries."

Google Cloud Printing

Yes the end is almost here. But any ways my blog for the week is about google cloud printing. Well google keep concocting ideas and there new one is prints. Google labs is planning to create an application that allows users to print from any internet based computer. according to techworldnews.com the google cloud print is said to revolve around google operating system, Chrome. All the applications are said to be webbased.

It seems that printers must be cloud aware. Google would have to work with the manufactuers of printers to get there idea up and running., since none are cloud print ready. The printers would have to connect through google through a proxy.

Several issues with cloud printing are privacy and securtiy. Google plans to combat any issue with with the two by allowing only authorized users to print from printers and keeping private information only availble to the person who requested the print. I think that cloud print will work for google but how well i don't know.

Indexing Tweeter Trail

No longer will your Tweets from Twitter be only seen by your followers and friends for just a few days or weeks. Google is now indexing all of peoples tweets in a big, searchable database. Recently Google has announced that it has a new search feature that lets users look at the entire history of tweets in anytime frame and in any subject. This new feature is set to debut in the next few days.

All you would have to do now is enter the search term and select the update option then with a click of a button you will find results of tweets on that search condition dating back to February 2010. And Google in working on progressing this date back feature to eventually get all of the past tweets dating back to the first one made on March 21, 2006.

Here is a example of the new feature

With this new Google made feature you can see all tweets on a specific day, month or even year with the handy graph that is displayed at the top of the page results. Google says that these features are pretty useful because you can see what people we talking about on a day of a major event or significant occurrence. But for those people who want to keep their privacy, you don't have to be included in this feature because you have the option of having your time line public or not.

Google AJAX API's

Looking for a good API, look no further than who else, Google. Google has taken the industry by storm with all of it applications and gadgets within the past couple of years or so. So what else could they come up with, some good AJAX API's. Working on my last individual project, I was stuck and could not get my web page to fix the output format of the feed I was using from the previous individual project. So I do what I usually do when I cannot find something I need, I Google'd API. And in the search results I found googles site for AJAX API's.

Google AJAX APIs

I knew google had the google maps API but didn't think about if they had any more until I looked up in their search engine and to my satisfaction I found what I needed. Google has a range of AJAX API's such as Google Maps, Google Search, Google Feed, Google Book Search and Google language just to name about half of them. These AJAX APIs cover a wide range of applications that you might want to use in the future if you are in that kind of web page creating field.

And to help you out with coding and writing script Google has also given you tools to make your job a little bit easier with Interatctive Code playground. This helps you edit and find mistakes in your code that can help your API run effiecienty. And Google has also provided Google API libraries for Google Web Toolkit and this is a collection of libraries that provide Java language bindings for popular Google Javascript APIs.

YouTube Redesigns Video Page with parts of AJAX

Before months end this past March, You-tube launched a new design to its website and its claiming to be one of the biggest redesigns in YouTube history. Some of the features include a new see more videos function, which should make it possible to load a horizontal grid of all the videos uploaded by a particular user.

This feature will use AJAX technology so in terms users do not have to reload pages so they can look through additional videos. Here is the list of new changes listed by newteevee.com:

• A drop-down menu above the video reveals a horizontal scroll bar offering access to all videos of a particular uploader.
• Logged-in users find an option to control their video queue right next to the video they’re currently watching, complete with an option to turn autoplay on or off.
• The grey box next to the video that used to offer info, URL and embed code is gone. There’s now an embed button below each video, along with other sharing options. Info about the clip is also right below the actual video.
• A new subscription button as well as a customizable logo above the video is supposed to offer uploaders more recognition.
• The five-star rating system is gone. Most users apparently only used it to make fairly binary choices, voting on a video with either one or five stars, so the new video page simply features a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down button to express likes and dislikes.
• Users that haven’t logged in simply get to see a really, really long list of clips.
• The masthead of the page is cleaned up, with various links to channel and show pages gone.

Pictures of Before and After

This relates to my iteration because in my individual iteration #3 I used a ajax application for video's to show up on my webpage.

Apple and Google Together Again??

First let me start off with talking about the great time I had at Menlo on Friday. Surprisingly not that many people showed up from our class (opportunity to get inside a great company and extra credit). But I felt like Menlo was just an overall "cool" place to work, they had the type of creativity that you would think only Google had in its work place. Basically the programmers were writing coding that you would find in IS315 (a bit more advance) but in pairs of twos. And every week you would be paired up with another partner.

On to my article of the week. Well after all my numerous articles about Google vs Apple. And the fact that the two CEOs, Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google, have had a public fallout, GIZMODO has posted pictures showing the two enjoying a cup of coffee last FRIDAY the 26th in Palo Alto, CA. A reader of the web blog saw the two and snapped these pics. The reader aslo overheard a little bit of their conversation. "Enthusiastically, "They're going to see it all eventually so who cares how they get it." Which seemed to be about web content, said the tipster. And, "Let's go discuss this somewhere more private," after they noticed the crowd gathering around."

I think this would of been a really cool site to see. I would of probably went right up to them and pitched my 30sec speech of why I am the perfect hire for either company lol But all joking aside, I think this might be the first step to maybe the two companies making amends. They probably realize that business might be better for the both of them if the two giants get a long.

Full Story can be found on Gizmodo

Google "leveraging" with it's Services?

First a little update on the Global IT Club. We missed many of you guys at are last meeting on Wednesday. It's very rare for Professor Drake to give out extra credit and many of you guys missed out on the opportunity as well as an awesome speaker, EMU's new CIO Carl Powell. Dr. Powell was very entertaining and had a lot of advice from his years holding high level IT jobs. Well I know its a little late, but there is another opportunity for extra credit today, Friday March 26th at 2:30pm as we go to Menlo Innovations. Meet us on the 2nd floor of the COB.

Now for the main story. First off, I love the Android platform. Just the ability to be able to download almost any kind of app you can think of and its ease of use. I figured that has to be one of the reasons why every other day I hear of a new Android phone made by this or that phone maker and on this or that carrier. But now multiple sources are coming out with a new reason to why there seems to be an explosive rise of Android handsets.

Google has been enticing manufacturers with a cut of revenue from their other services such as Maps or Search. This is almost the complete opposite of how Apple is bringing the iPhone to AT&T. AT&T pays Apple $400 for every iPhone it sells. So in a way Apple is making money while Google is giving money away. But if you look at it another way, Google has the money to give and this could be a very good investment because people have many, many options of Android handsets to choose from.

Via ENGADGET

What you need to know about Google vs. China

I know that this has been talked about quite a bit. But I found this article that gives a much better explanation of what is going on between Google and China. I was under the impression that the Chinese government wanted Google to collect more information from users for some reason. But this is apparently not the case.

What happened is Google was available in China when they first started up, but it was censored and sometimes shut down by the Chinese government. China's communist leadership restricts Internet content and political speech, so Google had to agree to censor some of its Internet search results in order to do business in China. Because of this Google launched Google.cn. Google says Chinese hackers tapped into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and conducted a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure." China denies these claims, but the situation caused Google to promise to stop censoring its results in China unless some kind of new agreement could be arranged between Google and China.

So I'm a little confused about something. Did the Chinese government hack the gmail accounts? Either way I agree with Google's decision to stop censoring search results. Communism just completely blows my mind away. I know Americans think they are entitled to their rights, but I sometimes wonder if we realize how lucky we are to not have to deal with the shit that some people have to deal with in other countries.

How Google used AJAX

While the term AJAX was first coined in 2005, Google waited until after April of 2009 to implement it into their god-like search-for-anything-engine. Today you can see the results of their update visibly in the new and improved drop-down text lists which are queried off of what you are currently typing. For example: if you were to type 'dogs' into the Google search bar, a drop-down list containing the possible phrases 'dogs 101', 'dogs for sale', 'dogs that don't shed', and even two having to do with 'dogs and chocolate'. Apparently dogs LOVE chocolate or something, but anyway.

This wasn't Google's main adaptation of AJAX on their search engine however, but is a mere bonus to what they were truly trying to accomplish after April of 2009. In an article listed on CNET at http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10220532-93.html?tag=mncol, Stephen Shankland talks about what's going on in the background that is actually making Google more money.

In a very simple adaptation, Google used AJAX to start loading the specific search results under the default 'boilerplate' that always remains in the same position after each subsequent search is performed. While this may be the definition practically of simple easy-to-use AJAX, the mere milliseconds that Google saves after each search really makes a difference. Apparently all of these quicker times ad up to a large amount of new searches, which in turn transfers into more ads being shown and therefor more money in Google's pocket. I figured they were merely updating their search engine to help benefit you and I by letting us know that 'dogs in funny costumes' was a possible search term, but I cash is the driving factor and I'm wrong as usual. Thanks Google.

Co-Inventor of XML goes in on Apple

First I want to give you guys an update on what's happening with the Global IT Club. Well as everyone knows this is Ethos Week and today former Vice President of Intel Corporation, Ken Fine, will be speaking at 5:30pm. Next week, we will be making a field trip to Menlo Innovations. This is a great opportunity for anyone that is interested in the company to get an up close look at what happens on the inside. The field trip will be next week Friday, March 26th. If you are interested in attending or have any questions, let Jenelle, Chris, me or Professor Drake know.

Now for my main feature story, the punches between Apple and Google just keep rolling. Yesterday, newly hired Android developer, Tim Bray, went off on Apple on his blog. Bray who recently left Window Mobile to join Google, expressed his dislike for the way Apple handles its app store and developers. He explained that Apple's "vision" of its internet future "omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger."

Those are some really harsh words. But Bray did say that as much as he hated that aspect of Apple, he still thought that the iPhone's hardware and software were both great. I really have to agree with everything he said. Recently Apple removed thousands of apps from the App Store that they felt were inappropriate. Some just showed women in bikinis or had names such as iBoobs but didn't actually show any nudity. They removed such apps but kept the ones made by "Big" companies such as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit App and the PlayBoy App. Why keep some and get rid of ALL others? I just don't get it and thats why I feel Android has a leg up on the Iphone.

This Article can be found on MACWORLD via Macwold UK

Google St. Patrick's Day

Since today is St, Patrick's Day I thought it would be fun to see what new doodle was going to be used by Google on there home page. They decided to go with a Celtic theme and used Celtic symbols to represent there logo. There was a little article that talked about this and how they usually celebrate different occasions by changing the appearance of their logo.


I also thought it would be interesting to see how many sites came up when you google St. Patick's Day. It turns out there was 19,100,000 results. Everything form news, history, images, and so much more.

This got me thinking. Many people celebrate St. Patrick's Day even if they are not Irish. This is a very old holiday with a lot of tradition and many people like to participate by drinking green beer and wearing green. This would be a great opportunity to create an AJAX application to find local Irish pubs, St. Patrick's Day events, news, and history.

Google, Google, Google!

Really, sometimes I think that Google's main objective in life is to take over the world. Seriously lol I only say that because it seems like everyday Google is on the news for release this or adding that. But hey I'm not complaining because I'm definitely a Google fan and I don't think I will be jumping off their bandwagon anytime soon.

This brings me to my blog for today about a new feature that Google has released. In Google Apps, enterprise admin policies have been added for iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile Devices. Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administers will not be able to manage the phones of their users without using additional software or managing dedicated enterprise servers.

Some of the settings that admins will have access to are: being able to remotely wipe data from lost or stolen devices, require each phone to have a strong password, and lock idle devices after inactivity. All this will be accessible under the "mobile tab" in the Google Apps control panel.

Even though this is more for businesses, I just think that it is very cool that Google has added it. I work at a medium size corporation and it took me a very long time to organize all the Blackberry's being used by employees and it took me a while to really grasp how to use the Blackberry Enterprise Server to manage the phones. This seems like a very easy and clean interface for businesses that do not want to spend a lot of money to buy the expensive software but want a way for their IT administrators to have control of access to corporate data on devices. You can read the full article at yet another on of Google's Official Blogs: Official Google Enterprise Blog

On a side note, if you have an iPhone and use exchange, did you know that there is a way to remotely wipe your lost or stolen phone? You can find the How-To guide HERE. I find this pretty cool.

Google Buzz

Another idea by Google, this one is called Google Buzz. Today Google has released a new networking tool called Google Buzz, this tool allows the sharing of photos/images, videos and status updates using a new Gmail tab. These new features of Google Buzz will be on android based phones and with web based application; on the Iphone as well. This allows for real time updates to show up on a your Google Buzz feed. The new Google Buzz tab will show up on 1% of gmail account users starting today and the rest of Gmail account users will see the tab within the upcoming week.

Google Buzz boast 5 main features to try and make you change to their social network. First is that it blends in with Gmail. The Buzz tab will be next to your inbox label allowing you to see photos, videos and status updates. This feature also integrates the top 40 people you interact with on Gmail and Gchat and automatically adds them as friends. Second Feature is "Page Rank" for status updates. This features lets you like or dislike peoples update statuses and over time it determines whether to show the status update or not. The third feature is "Media gets Pulled IN" in that videos from Youtube and pictures from flickr and Picasa appear as thumbnails in Buzz. So when you click on a video or picture the thumnail plays/appear inline on your Buzz page. And you can also pull tweets from twitter into Buzz.

Google Buzz Demo

The Fourth feature is"Mobile Features", Google Buzz will appear as a mobile web application where you can make status updates by voice or geotag your post. Another interesting thing with this feature is that when your using Google mobile maps, buzz updates appear on the maps so that you can see and read location based updates. And you can also see any Buzz updates that have been made near your location. And the Last feature is "Public or Private", you can make your Buzz either public or private. Private updates can go just to your followers or a select group of people. The public updates are posted to your own Google profile and it is indexed in for Google search.

Google VS Apple

Google is looking to go to war against the Apple iPad. Google is already in the design phase for their own tablet that would run on the Chrome OS system. Google has been trying to break into the operating system market for the last few years and recently launched the Droid smart phone, a joint venture with Motorola. Google wants to branch out into more fields than just being a search engine. Right now it seems that they have their sights set on taking a bite out of apple.

Google is a highly successful technology company who revolutionized web searches and whose ventures continue to create new ways of using the Internet. Apple has one big advantage over Google; they have been in the computer business for over thirty years. Apple knows the computer business in and out and just how hard it is to make a really good product that people want to purchase at a premium.

Google has probably done its research and knows what they are getting into but I can’t help but think that they may get more than they bargained for. The business of service is a lot easier to manage than the business of manufacturing. Google has a lot going for it but Apple is not going to down without a fight. Where Google is going to go in the next ten years is going to be really interesting. Will they be successful? Only time will tell.

Google Chrome

So I was was thinking and wondering what I would talk about this week for my blog and just looking up things about what other people had posted. And somehow I just came to the idea to write about something that I use on everyday basis with things for class, homework or just using it to explore the world wide web and it is Google's web browser called Google chrome.

Google Chrome is one of Google's most prized ideas in my viewpoint. It is the third most used browser with around 4.6% usage share of web browsers.Chromes public official release date was December 11, 2008 and its name comes from the graphical user interface frame of web browsers. It is written in C++ and assembly. It is an open source browser that uses Webkit layout engines and application framework and is powered by Google gears. Its includes features such as default homepage thats displays your most visited sites, tabbed browesers so that each tab gets its own process in which leads to fasting and more stable browsing and malware and phising lists that can automatically update themselves and warns you of bad websites.

Chrome Website and Video of Chrome

Chrome also has a mode called "incognito" that lets the you browse the web in complete privacy because this mode doesn't allow it to record any of your activity. Google advertises its web browser with three words speed, simplicity and style. Speed from quick starting from your desktop, faster loading of web pages and faster with running applications. Simplicity with the organization of the tabs and searching and navigating web pages from the same box. And lastly Style in that you can style the way your browser looks like with different artist themes and looks.

Google Blog For Students

While exploring the Official Google Blog that Professor Drake recommended to us, I came across something very cool. There was a directory that displayed all the different type of blogs that were officially from Google. Some of the ones that stood out were the official Chrome blog by the Chrome team and the Public Policy blog which gives Google's views on politics.

But there is one that really caught my attention and I think would be very useful to the rest of my classmates. It is called the Student Blog and gives the description: "Google news and updates for students".

Perusing through the first two pages and I already found some very helping posts in the blog. The very first post on the page talks about the new Google Docs page for students and give links to five different examples of students from different backgrounds/stages in the college careers using Docs to achieve different tasks. Things aren't posted everyday, but when they are it is something very valuable or informative. Many Google scholarships and how to apply for them are posted throughout the blog. As well as extensive walkthroughs and guides like "Using Google Apps to make the most out of Group Work"

Google Vs Microsoft: competition assumptions

It is fairly obvious that Google and Microsoft are one if not the most successful companies of all time. It is also clear that the two companies are not very close friends and therefore, they try hard to take on each other. I have ran into this cool article that highlights a suggested strategies on how Google can take out Microsoft and vice versa. The article starts by pointing out how to kill key competitors (major key competitors to be exact); three main factors to consider when trying to hurt your competitors are Patience, perseverance and last but not least destroying the opponent image by manipulating trust. The secret to being patient is to allow the opponent to do most of the work for you. In the following paragraphs, a brief look at how Google can take out Microsoft and vice versa will be highlighted.

Google can take Microsoft out for a couple of reasons. First, Microsoft image has been declining over the years and it has been effecting its ways of attracting key employees. Google has also been working on destroying the public image of Microsoft by pointing out as evil. Second, the fact that Google is very successful in its search engine had put Microsoft on the race to be match that; this has sucked many of Microsoft resources which could potentially bring down their profits. Lastly, Google can gain the available government trust that could help them win most of the local and international departments. This will also pressure Microsoft to respond with lowering its prices and increase its quality. As a result, Microsoft net income could get hurt pretty bad.

Microsoft can take Google out for a couple of interesting reasons as well. First, just like Microsoft, Google's image has been going down hill. It does not really effect its revenue as much but it could protect Microsoft. How? Simple enough, people don't want to replace an evil corporation by another. Second, Microsoft can focus on improving its search engine which is already happening as well as trying to capture the advertisement segment, which Google depends on heavily. There are many reasons but these are the main two. In conclusion, Google and Microsoft battle would go on for a long time and personally I think it would be hard to determine the winner!

Google vs Work at Home Scams

Since I blogged about Ebay vs Craigslist, I thought I would score a home run and post about another law suit. This time it is the significant, Google. Randomly enough, It filed its law suit last Monday which is the same time Whitman the former Ebay CEO took stand. Pacific WebWorks was the victim this time along with many unidentified companies. One can imagine the reason behind filing such a suit because of the deceiving behind the fake sources such as articles, website and blogs. I myself was getting interested in one of these and mainly because it was under the name of Google. In the following paragraphs, an in depth discussion of the Google case and the work at home scam will be taking place.

It is a noticeable fact that money is attractive, let alone fast easy money. The work at home scams is one of the most popular successful scams. What is a work at home scam? As quoted from the suit

"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand. The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."

The scammers make money by either asking their victims to purchase an instant access pass or a supposedly cheap kit that will help them generate fast money. After the victims purchase the pass or the kit with their credit card, they also get charged a monthly fee that could be as high as 80 dollars.

Following up the case, Pacific WebWorks has not commented on the suit yet which most likely suggest that Google was right. According to Google search quality engineer, Jason Marrison, Pacific WebWorks is believed to be the head operator of the chain. One of the most effective factors upon the success is not only the Google brand but also the level of persuasion used in these websites. For instance, scammers use fake blogs that contain affectionate success stories and "laughter after suffering" stories; These all trigger the victims to correspond with the pop add or the website. One of the issues worries Google is the enormous number of available scams that limits Google attempts to filter off its search engines. As mentioned earlier, WebWorks has not responded to press yet so a conclusion should not be drawn yet. All we have to do is wait!!!

What? A Google OS?

Google announced their new project to build a new kind of Operating System in July of this year. Their Chrome OS was unveiled on November 24, 2009 as a sneak peak but it will be at least year until it's officially released. I had no idea this was going on! With the two power houses, Microsoft and Apple, I'm impressed that Google is coming into the OS world to compete with them. Are they biting off more than they can chew? This remains to be seen. Here are some of the highlights:

• Open source


• Available to netbook users (initially)


• Speedy (light weight)


• Secure (redesigned underlying security architecture)


• Web applications

Google is currently working with OEMs to bring netbooks to the market next year. "All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies." (from the official Google Blog). Given the applications are available via the web makes this an attractive feature as it eliminates the need to install and manage applications on a local computer. I recently rebuilt my computer (twice in 3 months) so this concept is quite appealing to me. Google's goal is to create a product that is focused on internet users who are looking for speed and security. I'm extremely curious how this OS will evolve. It will be fun to watch.