Google Phone Rumors

Wow, this could be sweet. Don’t fret WM5 and 6 owners, competition is good!!!

 

From: http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/the-real-google-phone/

 

The most interesting aspect is the go-to-market strategy. Apparently, Google is planning to build distribution relationships with multiple carriers by allowing them to minimize subscription and marketing costs. In other words, Google will market the phone online and carriers will fulfill. How fast can you say dumb pipe?

 

 

Will Microsoft Home Server Make Computing Even Less Secure?

Don’t get me wrong, I think bringing a media server, ISS server, backup disaster recovery server to the masses of Joe blows is a great idea, I just hope we have analyzed what could happen if we do so. So it’s with a bit of a cringe that I react when I hear about Microsoft Home Server being announced. This will allow all of the same people who right now still have PC’s that are severely infected with Spyware, to be running servers with their own URLS. THe malware folks are dripping at the jaws right now thinking of what they will do with the URL’s out there that will now be controlled by the russian bot baking companies.

 

The big difference is, today, I can use generally use good taste to stay away from harmful websites for the most part, but this server could blur the line between a wholesome URL and one that’s not. Simply because the admin of the server has the best of intent, but doesn’t know how to run a server effectively. We need to think this through a bit more Microsoft, will we have JoeBlows running spyware infested URLS?

 

Otherwise, I think the idea is great, I’ll stick to ampache and apache but I might change my mind some day.  Now, remember, it wasn’t even three years ago that Bill Gates’ PC was home to malware.

Microsoft “Gets It” With Live Writer

Wow, I haven’t had a chance to really test all of the features but so far, this appears to be the best blog editor I’ve used. I’ve always wondered how long it would take for Microsoft to get one out the door and now I’m glad I stuck with Spaces. It may not have all of the features of other platforms, but I always can count of Microsoft to catch up, and then pass up the competition.

I won’t go into all of the features, but one that I really like is the ability to insert a Windows Live Local Map right into your blog. Below you can see my pool, have you ever seen a pool with so many trees around it?

Now Microsoft needs to give me more page side flexibility. I’d like to tie in data from various sources and I think in the long run, they will offer many cool things. Maybe I’ll do a review at some point, but in the mean time there are plenty of other sites with information.

Michael Arrington who’s opinion I usually can count on, really misses the mark when it comes to Live Writer. He says a few outlandish things. First he says that Microsoft Live Writer, "doesn’t differentiate itself from existing year old products." Then in the very next sentence goes on to point out that, "What does differentiate Live Writer is that they’ve released an API that allows developers to extend the capabilities of the software to publish additional content types." Even though other blogging software has opened API’s in the past.

He finishes with the number one ode to Microsoft in the form of a complaint. "Too bad that, like Google and Picasa, Microsoft has ignored the Mac platform."

Microsoft hasn’t ignored the Mac platform Mike, they are releasing products to drive customers away from them. Microsoft isn’t going to spend billions of dollars in research and development and then leverage that right into the Mac. They wrote Office for Mac so that Mac had a fighting chance. If you’ve seen Steve Jobs and his new stage crony, you’d know the Mac platform doesn’t need any help from Billy Boy anymore. And their iPod division is making a killing off selling defective iPods which don’t get reported as defective because the Best Buy boys try to tell you they are not supposed to be able to charge from USB. More on that another time.  

Google Ships new product Betas

First let’s start of google trends. This gives the user visual insight into what people are seaching from and the ability to find out what local regrion are interesting in certaint topics.

 

For instance: If you sell widgets, you can find out what regions are searching for widgets and then you understand where your target customers are by region.

 

 

Now we have Google gadgets (upgrade to Google Desktop 4). They’ve got a headstart with gadgets on the desktop against Microsof’ts Vista Operating system sidebar gadgets which which  is at the least 3/4ths a year away. Having said that Microsoft Gadgets is getting help from developers already with the live platform and as of right now, there are 274 Microsoft Gadgets which can only be consumed on the live.com website for now

 

Google Gapminder is a bit different. I don’t understand it completely yet as I haven’t had time to really look but it seems to be a visualized chart of developement trends in each country. I’ll look more into this later and if there are some interesting or useful aspect out there, I’ll certainly post about them.

Google Gapminder – Visualize World Development

 

Google co-op

 

Google Co-op looks to be doing what Zimbio is doing, creating user expertise into certain subjects. Web2.0 is all about user content and the user in general so this is past being an emerging theme. Certainly worth a look, I’ll have to post more as I know more.

 

Microsoft will enter Q&A online market

According to the brand new Microsoft Live QnA blog, Microsoft will soon launch–you guessed it–QNA beta. If you’re interested in signing up, head over to ideas.live.com and then click on QNA, then click on sign me up. Someone they had shared the project’s scope and access to the project posted images and information about the service, and so Microsoft turned on the blog service, and put did an announcement about the service. Dirty rats!! =)

 

From the site:

OOPS!  We hadn’t planned to talk about this yet but some Web pages went live overnight and well, we decided we might as well turn on the blog and give you the straight scoop. You’ll be seeing more on this blog about our team and our product as the days go by. In the meantime here are some more details about what we are doing.

 

And so now we will have a Google Answers, with paid experts, a free Yahoo! Answers, and now a Microsoft QnA. The first two forgot to mention that questions were a part of the equation as well! =) At any rate, according to the QnA blog, this answers engine has been floating around campus for a while, no word on if it was before Google answers or what ever.

From their blog:

A little background…
Once upon a time, there was an intern at Microsoft who had an idea for getting people answers to the questions they needed. He nicknamed it the “hyperengine” and everyone in Web Search used it for internal projects; it was way cool. Then, when he went back to college, the internal discussions started. Shouldn’t we be building a real one?

Grassroots momentum continued and eventually Windows Live QnA was born. We hired the intern back (yes,he graduated) and got another college hire to be core developers of this new idea  — creating a question-answer engine driven by the people.

While, it almost sounds like they are denying they are building a 100 percent carbon copy of all of Google’s offerings while holding a strait face and not even busting up laughing. Very talented indeed!

That dog above looks 100 percent like my dog… If you don’t beleive me, check out my photo album.

 

From the site:

Topics will range from business, health, arts, sports, technology and more.
• Does ivy kill trees?
•  What’s a good, inexpensive moving company in Seattle?
• Any great ideas on getting motivated to exercise?
• What’s the best chocolate chip cookie recipe?
• Can I hook up an Xbox to a PC monitor instead of a TV?

I’ll do a better review once I get my beta account set up.

 

 

Google Calendar Ships

After many people predicting Google’s calendar would ship and it not shipping multiple times, Google Calendar has finally shipped. Calendar.google.com It’s not as useful as 30 Boxes, but it’s a great calendar that many will use. Google is slowly but surely creating Google Office. (they recently purchased an online word processor) I love the fact that I can pull in a sports team calendar, or a cities calendar of events. Usage by the masses is what will make it the best calendar, and Microsoft better get a solution up fast, or Outlook could be damaged by the future of the shared calendar.

 

Calendar.google.com

A first look at Zimbio: “The People’s Guide to the Web.”

 

I have been offered the privilege of testing and publicly previewing Zimbio (formerly Zoozio), a new company and service that will be shipping a public beta soon. Before I really dive into details, I’d like to mention how impressed I am with the progression of the web. I’ve been keeping a keen eye on new innovations for the past few years.  Each time I check out something new, I find new services and concepts are being implemented on top and beside each other, sometimes redefining old concepts, sometimes creating new ones, but each time I dive in I am finding services are driving (or mashing) the bar a little bit higher, and certainly Zimbio is no exception.

 

This preview is divided into two sections: a Q&A with the founders/creators and a first glance at Zimbio. Let’s check out the service first and then have a talk with the founders.

 

Rght now Zimbio works with IE and Firefox, with Safari Support in progress. If you would like to know what value Zimbio adds, think about it like an About.com meets Wikipedia.org, although there are services baked into the service which can be found in many other places on the Web as well as a few new concepts. We’ve seen Wikipedia become THE encyclopedia, Digg rival Slashdot, and so if there is one emerging theme to the future of the web it’s the people who power it.

 

In a nutshell Zimbio is a service which enables public portals, which are basically information guides to help members quickly lower the learning curve on any topic. If things turn out as expected, I would expect Zimbio to become the first base for research when it is in the scanning phase of R&D, as well as a very useful site for people to quickly become familiar with any given subject.

 

From Zimbio.com:

We’re a collaborative media company, and our mission is to help people learn from others on the Internet. Our network of public portals are designed to help people quickly get down the learning curve on any topic of interest by seeing what other people are reading, saying, and recommending about the topic.

 

I think that’s an impressive mission which deserves diving into and exploring.

 

At first glance you see the service’s frontpage. Which is an index of categories. Here, you will find a wide variety of subjects. From Sports & Recreation to Politics and Current Events to Entertainment and what index would be complete without Technology & Computers–there is something of interest for everyone, and hopefully everyone is a guru at something and can contribute at some point.

 

 

It’s important to note that Zimbio does not aim to be an encyclopedia, rather a portal containing links, pictures, feeds from blogs on the subject, search macros, forum discussion, live chat, and a group blog on the subject at each portal. 

 

Anyone can simply browse or search through the growing mountain of information but a user must first create an account and profile before being able to comment, add links, or create a new portal.

 

Inside each portal are various nuggets of info about the portal’s subject. There are many useful panes which can be dragged around and organized depending on how the guru wants the layout to look. A nice AJAX interface is complemented by a smooth clean design.

 

 

So far, I am really impressed with the service. As of this posting, there are only a few contributers (Small Private Beta), but a wealth of information. When the service launches (soon) the service will be transformed into a really great and very useful resource on the web, which I think will rival and eventually outdo destinations like About.com. It’s all about the power of the people!!

 

---

 

Questions and Answers with Tony Mamone & Danny Khatib–the Company’s founders.

 

Q: Hello, I was wondering if you could telll me more on the history of this service, and what made you think of creating it.

 

A: Our Inspiration: It’s still a pretty difficult thing to quickly learn about a general topic on the web, and it’s even harder to piggyback off the experience and knowledge of other people who’ve already taken the time to get informed about a topic. Most people who want to learn about a subject just start pounding a few different keywords into a searchbox, sequently click through the results, and hope to find something relevant. Sometimes that’s a very pleasant experience. Other times it’s a time consuming and impersonal experience. We’d personally like to use a service that makes it easy to browse the knowledge and energy of other people. And we hope others would, too.

 

Our History: Tony and I co-founded the company in late summer (05), and our small team has been building the service since the fall. We’ve literally just begun private demo testing. So we’re a young company.

 

Q: What are you planning on doing with spam/splogs? Hopefully your site won’t merit a new type of spam word! (Sportal?)

 

A: Spam is something we think about a lot. We plan to build in several defenses over time, since this will require permanent, ongoing attention. For now, here is our first line of defense:

• We do not accept anonymous contributions (a major source of comment spam). You must be a registered member to add a link or a comment
• Any member can delete another comment or link (the primary wikipedia model of defense)
• We track all submissions by member, so we can more easily identify when a member is considered a "spammer" and track all the activities of that member.
• We can manually block usernames and email addresses from posting content.

Q: One major difference between Wikipedia and Zimbio is the concept of a Guru. A Guru is the "owner" so to speak of the content on each portal that he/she is the guru. What happens when a guru loses interest in being guru, does that affect the quality of that portal, and are there rules fleshed out for losing your "guru job?" Thanks again and I look forward to enjoying and contributing to your new service!

 

A: For many folks, interest in a specific subject waxes and wains. While we’d like to think that gurus will always remain passionately involved with their portals, we know that some folks will move on to other subjects. Part of the magic of Zimbio is that any member can contribute content to a portal, not just the original guru, and over time active contributors can be promoted to guru status for a specific portal. We expect there to be multiple gurus for each portal over time, many of whom did not actually create the portal. So this will hopefully allow our community to avoid the absent landlord problem.

11 ideas which would make Microsoft’s Service Platforms More Attractive

Here is an email I sent to the Xbox Live team with my suggestions for making Xbox and a few other Microsoft Live services better (for the most part, we are talking xbox live). If they give me feedback, and don’t mind me sharing it, I’ll post their replies here as well. Keep in mind, they might be working on some of this stuff already, and I’m sure they are at least working on at least something listed here. (Or I hope)

 

Feedback from anyone who happens to read this is hoped for! Thanks!

---

 

Hello, thanks for the most innovative console service in history. I just have a few thoughts which I think would make Microsoft’s service platform more attractive. I love to be helpful and innovate, but I have to admit that the reason I am suggesting this is somewhat selfish. (I have a 360 and I don’t want the PS3 to do as well as the PS2)

 

1. Let me suggest Xbox.Live.com. Let me set my xbox.live.com page up on my computer, to be consumed and shared by my online friends and me on the 360.

 

2. I don’t like not being able to make my playlists on the 360 pull networked media. I only put game media on my Xbox’s hard drive, and/or any future media which are downloaded from Xbox live.

 

3. I think I might have heard that you all were going to put in some of the new MTV/Media Player work on Xbox live, but if not, make sure you do. .

 

4. Please make my spaces blog available to my friends on Xbox live. I don’t see why not, you all control that server space so security isn’t much more of a concern. As far as development is concerned, if you all haven’t started on RSS/Atom functionality on the Xbox, now would be a good time to get started.

 

5. Make my playlists and favorite media on my Xbox shareable. Please include a short sample with each item (like on msn spaces) as well as a link to buy the songs. (Either MSN or the new MTV thing)

 

6. I would like to take in game screenshots, add captions and tags to it, and upload and share them. This can be via my blog or a Flikr type service; you could throw in a default gadget on xbox.live.com.

 

7. Increase the Maximum length of message recordings on Xbox Live by at least three times. I’ve just started making friends there and I swear I could get a job at an auction.

 

8. Please inform me at the record message screen if my joystick is on mute.

 

9. Live.mail.com should be integrated into Xbox live.

 

10. Please add a shareable calendar to Xbox live. This is a social network right?

 

11. Please have a keyboard ready for the system by the time the PS3 comes out.  It will be more useful after you have items 1-10 hashed out.

I hope this has provided at least a spark to you, and if so, all I ask is that you let me know. I don’t have a 2005 Media Center (2004), and I am waiting for a cable card ready Vista one.

 

Thanks again for a great product; I actually have friends now that I can play online with. (None of my real friends really get into console games enough)

 

 

Microsoft Gadgets: There’s over 200 of them now

http://microsoftgadgets.com/Gallery/ I am gonig to do a review of which ones I like the best soon. There are some killer enhancements to the live platform, and it’s being pushed by a large developer backing. Great stuff in there, take a look.

Amazon launches Simple Storage Service

This is for the small developer who can throw his/her data up on a very cheap responsive storage grid. Michael Arrington at Techcruch profiles the new service offering.

 

Pricing is cheaper than anything else I’ve seen: $0.15 per GB of storage per month, and $0.20 for each GB of data transferred up or downstream. This translates to $15 per month for 100 GB of storage, net of any transfer fees (to move that much data on to S3 would be a one time cost of $20).

 

I’ll have to ask my brother whether it makes sense to move his company’s back end here.