Every year I wait April 1st to see what the team at Google have come up with ideas. PigeonRank, Google writer, Gmail paper, … were interesting and innovative and shows that Google puts efforts into creating April fools themes. This year, it was more like a disappointment.
Missing vowels from Gmail’s login page
Another prank was Google changing their name on the search engine to TOPEKA !
Now this one is more of political aspect than humor. Perhaps a Google response to “Think Big Topeka” and the huge campaign that the community of Topeka has started to attract Google’s attention to bring the 1 Gbit Fiber experiment.
Octazen Solutions is a two employees startup company in Malaysia developing a contact importer software that allow sites like Facebook to grow exponentially in users. A feature like Friend Find where a registered user, by simply entering his email address and password, will be able to send an invite to his entire contact list. No wonder that Facebook has more than 400 million users where 250 million added in the last year alone.
Last week, Facebook acquired Octazen Solutions. This “talent acquisition” as described on GigaOM, means that Octazen engineers are going to shutdown their business operations to join Facebook as it says on the company’s website. Read more…
Nokia’s latest mobile operating system Maemo, launched beginning of October in N900 handset didn’t turn out as expected. At the same time, the processor giant Intel is still waiting for the best opportunity to enter the mobile world. The cooperation between Nokia and Intel has been rumored for a while in the industry and in blogs and finally it is announced today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Maemo + Moblin = MeeGo
This is the new formula that Nokia and Intel put in place to fight Google Android. Watch the video below to check the different point of views from both partners regarding this cooperation.
It was announced today in a press conference that the first commercial LTE network is launched in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway. The announcement brings no surprise since TeliaSonera and Ericsson have been working together on the LTE development project since 2008, aiming to launch the service commercially in 2010. Similar project was ongoing in Oslo, however with the Chinese manufacturer Huawei. The first milestone in the project was the LTE site launched in central Stockholm in May 2009.
Telia promises data rates of 50 Mbps to start with are expect to double as the network gets optimized. From the network point of view, it looks promising and today’s launch will increase the trust factor in LTE and we will see even more contracts from other operators in the world.
Note that many have already planned the rollout of LTE sometime in 2010, however many are still satisfied with the 21 Mbps that their Turbo 3G networks (HSDPA) can offer.
A disadvantage with this early launch is however on the terminal side. Read more…
Google launches a new set of services this week that will challenge many startup companies core products as Gigaom puts it. I see it as a good move for the benefit of technology because Google is one the companies that have the means to make a change at a large scale. Startup companies had the features for a while but the end users didn’t know about them. It is true that the competition is harder now in the mobile application marketplace but very important to see significant improvements. Here is an initial list of the features launched by Google: Real time search
They have integrated public updates from Twitter, Facebook Pages in the results pages. Updates from MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and identi.ca will be also available.
Google Goggles Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones that will allow web search using pictures from the mobile camera. More information about this service is available here.
Voice search
So far the supported languages are English, Mandarin and now Japanese and will soon support more languages. This is a very interesting feature because it will boost mobile web usage. As I explained in an early post, typing text on a mobile device is not cool. In the end, Google wants to support live language translation in a conversation.
These are interesting services for the end user but this is also means more data for Google from which they can create new revenue streams.
Since the creation of the web, searching for information irrespective of the type has been depending on text input to formulate the search query. This approach was good enough since the information was mainly text based. When media content started spreading drastically over the web, photos and videos and as they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, the same keyword approach was extended to index photos, music and videos based on the context in which they appear. Google has proven that this method is successful. And from the user’s point of view, it’s very convenient, because typing text on a keyboard is the easiest way to build a query. However, as we are moving more and more towards mobile broadband, other input alternatives must be considered to build a search query. Despite the touch screen and the great user experience it has introduced to mobile users, it can never be as good as a normal keyboard due to the small size of the mobile device.
Furthermore, a mobile user expects to build a search query even in a faster way than typing text on a PC keyboard, like speech commands for example. Another input possibility in a mobile phone, is the lens of the camera which allows user to get information about photos or views without having to describe it by text. This ambition is not new, many companies have been investing in image recognition techniques for years. To match and identify similar pictures is a hard technical problem but the search giant seems to have an answer: Google Goggles. Read more…
A new EU Project on Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) will allow automated driven cars in convoys on European highways – in 10 years.
The idea behind the project is that you connect the leader vehicle which can be a taxi, truck or any car with a driver who is familiar with the road. After that, the car will join the convoy, follow the lead, accelerate or slow down when necessary which you can relax and enjoy the ride. At any time, you can contact the leader vehicle and leave the convoy and take over the control of your car for example when you reach your destination or need to change roads.
The vehicles in automated mode are able to detect gaps created by other vehicles leaving the convoy and can adjust it to keep a uniform distance. Another ground rule is that a vehicle can only join a convoy in the last position. A convoy can be around 6-8 cars length. Below is a video that shows the SARTRE lead system in action. Read more…
The “Intel Inside” tag has marked the desktop PCs (74% acc. Q4 2008) since the 1990s. In 2020, Intel expects to stample “Intel Inside” on our foreheads. According to PhysOrg, Computer chip maker Intel wants to implant a brain-sensing chip directly into the brains of its customers to allow them to operate computers and other devices without moving a muscle.
Research projects to connect animal brains to robots have been carried out for many years. Rats and monkeys have already been able to control robots with brain signals. It was a matter of time before some large company announces a product that will allow human brain to communicate with electronic devices around them. Who’s better than the world leader in silicon innovation and world’s largest semiconductor chip maker to take that challenge? Read more…
While the world is still struggling with financial crisis and swine flu, the people at NASA are always looking for new ways to send people to space. I heard some stories few years ago that a bus shuttle is being developed that would be able to take people on a ride to the moon.
While these stories might be just rumors, taking the elevator on the other hand might be a more realistic option.
In a Power Beaming Challenge competition arranged by NASA and Spaceward Foundation, a prize money of $900,000 went to LazerMotive, a Seattle company
that successfully demonstrated new wireless energy beaming technology which could one day be used to help power a “space elevator.”, according to the press release by NASA.
As usual, a video to illustrate the event is available below Read more…
Developments in mobile phones are generally targeted to the mass and to satisfy the needs of the normal user in the daily life. We have seen High definition camera, Mobile TV, Mini Projectors in Mobile Phones, internet browser and more or less a tiny computer, not to forget the wide range of applications in the smart phones (especially iPhones and android based handsets) that transform the phone to a GPS receiver, sophisticated game console and so on. But a microscope ??
While this is not a feature that a normal mobile user would need, but it certainly has an advantage for researchers out in the field away from the lab. Using about $10 off-the-shelf components and mobile phone, the researchers at UC Berkeley have created a microscope.
Check the video below to know more about this innovation. Read more…
