Changes at Google?

Somehow I don't think this is a good thing.

"Google is in the content production business."

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On Goggles.

It's late.

I'm home from my book club, happy, and slightly under the influence, having drunk several glasses of excellent red wine.

Google just know that am in no fit state to be allowed to send anyone an email.
Google Goggles will take control.


Before I can Gmail anyone on and Friday or a Saturday night I will be required to answer a few simple maths questions. 

Get them wrong, the email doesn't get sent!
Maths was never my strongest subject.

So in future if you don't get an email from me, don't blame me, blame the Goggles.

Do you suppose the Goggles should be applied to my blog too?

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Google Blog Search

You may not have noticed but Google has changed the look of it's Blog Search Homepage.

On the new page related stories are grouped together into groups, together with a numerical count of the number of blogs discussing the story. This creates a hierarchy of subjects, showing what's hot or not.

Additionally the page carries a list of links to "Top Stories" in a curious mix of topics.
Politics, US, World, Business, Technology, Video Games, Science, Entertainment, Movies, Television, Sports.

Once you undertake a search of your own, the blog search results look as they have always done.


Some commentators have noted that the Blog Search Homepage is not unlike early versions of sites like Digg.  I agree.


The change to the Blog Search Homepage to my mind makes the page more interesting, and more likely to encourage me to stray from my intended search area, a sort of of accidental Stumbleupon.

If it is designed to lead us further into the world of unknown bloggers, it works. 

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Google, YouTube and Rory Cellan-Jones.

Creative users of YouTube (ie producers of content not consumers of content) might want to read this post by Rory Cellan Jones on the  BBC dot.life blog where they might learn something to their advantage.


Now I begin to see how YouTube is going to make money.

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All at Sea with Google.

The ever interesting Fimocuculous asks "Is Google Starting it's Own Country?" and points to an article on Radar, which in turn points to an article credited to the Independent but actually in The Times.

"The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate
its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles (11km)
offshore. The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their
computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean
the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres,
which are sited across the world, including in Britain."



How clever is that?

Imagine all our data, our google docs, this blog, our search history all at sea.

Afterthoughts.

"Offshore status" would also I guess place all our data far far away from any prying governments.
I wonder where these barges would be registered ie. what flags would they fly?

Presumably the data would have to be backed up on land which would still result in energy costs.

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Google in Space ?

This story has been reported all over the internet, but it's still worth noting.


Remember the phrase "eye in the sky" ?

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On Google Chrome.

I've not looked at Google Chrome yet (I just love my Mac), but it's arrival on Tuesday has resulted in a torrent of speculation, observation and hysteria.

Yes we might be seeing the next chapter in the Browser Wars, but right now Google chrome is a new untested product. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera have the browser market covered. The new Google product will have to be good to make its presence felt.

Even now with Firefox seeming to be the browser of choice for many of my colleagues, it is still only used by less than twenty percent of internet users.

Somehow I can't see Chrome cutting up that market. Despite that I've signed up with Google to be informed when Chrome for the Mac appears, just in case.


As is so often the case with Google the user agreement paper work for Chrome wasn't quite correct.

More food for thought.

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Two Google stories! Street View and YouTube

Yesterday while looking out of the bedroom window I saw a car drive past with what appeared to be a tripod on it's roof with camera's (?) pointing in all directions. In my head I thought ah a Google camera car. It has to be said that the car was travelling at speed, quite fast for the narrow quiet road on which I live, it's speed made me think that it couldn't have been a google surveyor but then today I read this.

"Google Street View" matches photographs to maps, providing a real 3D view of a location. If passers by or residents are in the street as the image is taken, they appear on the "Street View" display. In the States some individuals have complained about their presence and had their images removed or blurred, Google "has said it has begun to trial face blurring technology,
using an algorithm that detects human faces in photographs."

Here in the UK "Privacy International, a UK rights group, believes the technology breaks data protection laws."In our view they need a person's consent if they make use of a
person's face for commercial ends," said Simon Davis of the group.""

I wonder did they catch my face peering through the window?

The story makes my sighting of the strange camera car all the more interesting because the same news story includes this sentence. "Photographing of areas in the UK, including London, is believed to have started this week."


Coincidentally Google was in the news yesterday. A judge in the States has ruled that Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched a video on YouTube to Viacom. That's 12 terabytes of data! Apparently the viewing log will contain the log in ID of users, the computer IP address and details of the video clps watched.

Scarey stuff. Once Viacom have the data what will they do with it.

This court case raises once again all sorts of questions about the vast amounts of personal data held by social networking sites, ISPs, Google, etc.etc.

Big Brother has not gone away!

On Driving with Google....

Well, look at this, came across it via Gizmodo

It's a driving simulator, sort of, powered by Google maps.

It's a shame that it doesn't notice when you leave the road or crash into things but wow it's a lot of fun!

Four types of vehicle, three types of map, simple controls,indicators and the whole world to play with!

On Firefox and iGoogle

For some time now I've been researching personalised start pages including iGoogle. The problem with such pages is that you can't view the content and be elsewhere on the Internet at the same time without opening a new tab, a new window or by moving away from the start page.

Today while reading Digital Inspiration I was pointed in the direction of a Firefox extension that places iGoogle in the sidebar. How clever is that?

This provides us with the best of both worlds, full firefox capability plus continuous visible access to everything on my personalised home page. Access to all the tabs in iGoogle is provided in the sidebar, as is the ability to move widgets on the homepage and the iGoogle themes show in the sidebar!

With a careful choice of widgets, I think most of the features of Flock can be replicated using this extension.

The screen capture at the top of this post shows Firefox running with two sidebars open, one carrying sage (my feed reader) and the other running the iGoogle extension with the Facebook widget open displaying my status and my own widget showing news feeds from the faculty.

I think it's called multitasking.

On the Hair at the End of the Tail

It's been a month since I last posted so it's time to return to the blog with a review of last year.

According to Google Analytics between January 1st 2007 and January 1st 2008, On a Hill received 2,637 visits from 2,207 absolute unique visitors, who between them made 3,957 page views.

My guess is that in the scheme of things that's pretty pathetic, but the statistic makes me smile.
Whether any of my visitors learned anything from On a Hill remains a mystery.
I hope they did.
I on the other hand have gained and learnt much from maintaining this simple blog.

During the last year I made 93 posts and visitors made 24 comments.

The ten most visited pages in order of popularity are listed below.

1. In search of gradatim ferociter
2. Gradatim ferociter
3. On deleting Facebook
4. On Facebook, students and porn
5. On UCAS, plagiarism and pyjamas
6. Gradtim ferociter, the search goes on
7. Problems with Facebook
8. On Facebook Fridays
9. Notes on Facebook
10. On email addiction and statistics

As is ever the case the subject about which I and the world know least remains the most popular. It might be time for me to make another post about Blue Origin and it's enigmatic motto!

45% of my visitors used Firefox, 45% Internet Explorer, and 6% Safari, with the remaining few percent using Opera, Netscape, Camino, Blazer and the curiously named HTC-8100.

72% of my visitors used Windows as an operating system, 24% used Mac, 2% Linux, the rest used AIX, PalmOS, Playstation Portable, SunOS and iPhone.

Visitors came from 96 separate sources with 70% coming via Google, and much smaller percentages of visitors arriving directly from blogger, sitemeter, technorati, computing research at glamorgan, phdweblogs and similar sites.

Geographically America provided the most visitors, followed closely by Europe. Asia, Oceania and Africa followed a long way behind. The figures show that very few visitors came here from South America (I guess that's a language thing) and very very few from Africa which remains the dark continent on my map of visits. The stats show one visit from Aghanistan! Perhaps I should add one of those map widgets to the blog.

It's worth noting that the visitors from the smaller traffic sources (ie everyone except Google) stayed longer and visited more pages per visit.

I guess they really wanted to be here and didn't arrive by accident.

How did you get here?

Platform Wars

Although it might seem to be of interest only to technical geeks, something important happened in cyberspace this week.
The news slipped out in a press release and in the Facebook Developers Blog.

"Bebo, the global Social Media Network, today (12.12.07) announced that it has launched its Open Application Platform, opening its API to third party developers to integrate their applications with the Bebo site."

Furthermore

"The Bebo Open Application Platform will be the first in the industry to implement the standards defined by the Facebook Platform, an open development system that enables companies and engineers to extend Facebook's more than 7,000 applications to other social websites."

In plain English, this means that Bebo has opened up its platform to third party developers and at the same time has made it the same as the Facebook platform; which could lead to the Facebook platform becoming the dominant platform while hindering Google's plans for Opensocial.

At a time when Facebook has been struggling to overcome a few problems related to advertising issues this is a clever move.
Facebook are sharing, but by sharing have moved into a position of control.

Here's Facebook's explanation

"Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins -- users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications."

Hmm.
How many users does Facebook have?
How many users does Bebo have?

In the developing battle of platforms, there are two contenders, Facebook and Google but Facebook is taking charge.

They both want a share of the action.
They both want to share.
I wonder will they share with one another?

Remember betamax?

On Truth, Google Ranking and a Meme.

As a result of thinking about the "This is the Truth" experiment on The Science Creative Quarterly, David Ng at World's Fair has made a suggestion for a new meme, to be known as the "I rank number one on google" meme!"

He says

"the premise is that you will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google (preferably google.com, but we'll take the other country specific ones if need be), you'll find that you are returned with your blog as the number one hit."

This is an interesting meme, the results of which reveal a little about how google works and a little about individual blogs.

A little effort, patience and exploring with google.com produced the following number one hits for "On A Hill"

• "on the playing of violins"
• gradatim ferociter
• bonk and flying fish
• burnt pyjama story
• facebook students and porn

You can find it all On the Hill!

On the End of the Week

It's been a busy week. I'm a little ashamed to say that I've neglected the blog. it's good to be back.

My trip to Dundee for the HEA Web 2.0 Day took three perhaps four days out of my work schedule; which has not been helped by it being half term. I had a good time North of the border and met several researchers working in my field who were interested in our work. It was good to be able to compare notes and experiences. My talk was surprisingly well received which leads me to think that I should work harder.

During the last month the hit counter has shown some interesting trends. I'm getting more and more visitors in search of information about deleting Facebook, a surprising number of hits in search of Facebook porn while the endless search for "gradatim ferociter" continues. Additionally the number of visitors visiting more than one page On a Hill has increased significantly. It's also worth noting that one visitor arrived On the Hill from Afganistan, via a microwave link; it seems that even in Kabul worries about Facebook led one Googler to The Hill!

The high spot of the week just has to be the arrival of my Macbook Pro.
I've spent far too much of the day loading Leopard, Microsoft Office:Mac and Firefox. Transferring information and data between two machines has led to me to consider the problems created by reading blog feeds on two computers. Much as I love sage (for Firefox) it may be that Google Reader will become my feed reader of necessity.

The problem now is what's to be done with my Macbook ............
Decisions, decisions!

On Spam, Google, Curt Bonk and Flying Fish

It's been said that I spend too much time on the Net, so to save time I've been trying out Google Alerts.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include: * monitoring a developing news story * keeping current on a competitor or industry * getting the latest on a celebrity or event * keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

I have a few alerts running, one of which is for the "University of Glamorgan".
To be honest the responses I get for this query are fairly mundane and repetitive but on October 12th. I was intrigued to notice a message which included the following text.

UK E-Learning Reflections: UK leads the way or does it?
Monday the 15th was spent in Wales with a presentation to teachers of the future of ICT and schools at the University of Glamorgan ......

What caught my eye in this instance, is that I was there, I heard the presentation and after the event read the speaker's blog and therefore recognised the posting. (It's true I spend oo much time on the Net)

The speaker was Curt Bonk from Indianna University, the talk took place on January 15th at the University of Glamorgan, Treforest and he blogged about it on January 20th.. The talk was memorable; the speaker threw me a stuffed fish, and the blog made for interesting reading.
Why then, should it appear in a Google alert ten months after the event?

Following the provided link I found myself reading Curt's blog entry again, but this time on an anonymous blog, made of pieces cut and pasted from the net; 23 random articles, copied without reference their original source.
Examination of the page reveals that each article has been tampered with and links to commercial sites added.

It's spam!

The problem here is that I nearly fell for it.
The spam came courtesy of Google.
Google Alerts sent me the link.

Reader beware!

PS. (added 17.10.07)
My most recent Google alert message arrived yesterday informing me that this post existed!

If I were to adjust the settings on my alerts it would be interesting to explore how long it takes for an alert to be sent.
I'm just curious.

On Google Docs

Last night I used Google Docs for the first time.

Here are my first impressions.

Google Docs is an on line word processor, designed to facilitate collaborative work. In some respects it is similar to a wiki, but with many additional features.

The workspace is simple and clear, if you can word process you can use this, existing documents can be imported or you can start from scratch. The working or completed documents are stored by Google ( I know there are issues here), so accessing and working on documents is made possible anywhere with Internet access, at home, at the office, in the library in the cyber cafe.

What makes this application special, is the ability to collaborate, to work with others on the same document, at the same time or at a different time. Documents are shared via an email link in which collaborators can be offered viewing or revising rights. A revision history (cf wiki) is kept, allowing users to reference, compare or revert to earlier versions.

There is no doubt that this has enormous potential as a tool in educational settings. Imagine two users working on the same document; in the same room on two separate laptops, the revision history facility makes it possible for tutors to see who contributed what to group assessment activities, a class of students pupils can all access the same document, etc.etc.

A brief glance at the privacy settings suggests that work should be safe from prying eyes, the facility to publish documents to the web is provided offering viewing or editing rights according to the original author's wishes. A facility is also offered allowing posting directly to a blog (used for this post).

This is a special application, no wonder Microsoft and Adobe are rushing to release similar offerings.

What if?

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing fame has written a wonderful story for RADAR simply titled Scroogled.

"Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches ...... What if it controlled your life?"

It's an excellent read.


Later I came across this and laughed, and began to wonder.
What gender is Google?

Read the proofs, read the commandments and pray!

On Google Docs, Commoncraft and dotSUB

Although I do very little collaborative work I can see the value of Google Docs.
There can be no doubt that those involved in group activities would find the ability to share and work on documents on line useful.

Lecturers might want to bring Google Docs to the attention of their students, and possibly explore the application themselves to facilitate the preparation of papers for departmental, university and wider audiences.

The commoncraft team have produced an excellent video, describing clearly and simply how Google Docs works.
Watch it.

Regular readers would not be surprised to read that I would be careful about the sort of documents that I might place in Google's care. It might not be the place for highly sensitive, controversial or valuable documents. On the other hand documents placed in Google's care might be more secure than those left on lost and stolen laptops or on the hard drives of second hand computers.


As a result of reading the commoncroft blog I have been introduced to dotSUB, a Web 2.0 application that provides an easy way for videos to be translated into a wide range of languages by the use of subtitles.

Its very clever, simple to use and should be noted by those who work in bilingual and multilingual countries.

On Blogger Play

If you've nothing better to do why not give Blogger Play a whirl?

It's interesting, rather mesmeric, and it's led me to some interesting blogs.
Many of the photographs are just breathtaking.

I bet it sucks up bandwidth.

In their own words.

"Blogger Play will show you a never-ending stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs. You can click the image to be taken directly to the blog post it was uploaded to, or click “show info” to see an overlay with the post title, a snippet of the body, and some profile information about the blogger who uploaded it."

"It's a great snapshot of what people are thinking and posting about right now"

Inappropriate images are filtered out and should you not want your images appearing an opt out facility is available.

Am I alone in finding this a little scary?
Did you know your blogged photos are being shown (albeit fleetingly) to an unsuspecting audience?
Did anyone ask your permission?
Did anyone tell you it would happen?

It's not quite Big Brother is watching, more a case of everyone in the world watching!

On Solar power at the Googleplex

Google have fitted solar panels on the rooftops of eight of their buildings and two of their car ports at the Googleplex

According to Google, this installation

is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google's peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings at our Mountain View, CA headquarters.

As befits a company that guides us through digital space, Google has made a serious commitment to solar energy production.
Monitor their day to day production of electricity here.

I wonder how many coffee makers there are in the Googleplex?