Google posts

Google’s competitor for Apple’s Siri is codenamed “Majel” and could be launched before the end of the year according to AndroidandMe. Geeks are aware that Majel is a reference to Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the voice of the computer on Starships as well as various roles on several of the Star Trek shows. Google’s Voice Actions is currently in use on most Android phones. While Siri functions primarily from natural speech, Google’s VA operates through direct and specific commands. Majel is intended to change that. While December is possible, that…

It is said that most acts of kindness are done with ulterior motives in mind. The offer that Google’s top executives – CEO Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin, and Chairman Eric Schmidt – made to NASA to save the iconic landmark may qualify. NASA needs $33 million to revamp the hangar. The Google execs, through a separate company they own called H211 which operates the 8 private jets owned by the Google trio, would like a new place to park their jets. H211 would like around 2/3rds of the floor space at Hangar One for their jets. Their proposal would keep NASA as the owner and would allow them to lease the…

Google+ is the Facebook killer. Google+ is a fad. Google+ will break records. Google+ will fall flat. These and many other opinions are floating around and, depending on who you ask, fall under the category of personal preference and level of trust in Google and/or Facebook. In other words, nobody knows what Google+ is going to be and whether or not it will be successful, but there are definitely people using it today. Who are they? That’s the question that our friends at Flowtown answers in their most recent infographic. Click to enlarge. …

Google has always kept their search algorithms close to the vest, but in recent weeks they’ve opened up a bit more than usually and given glimpses of what they do and how they do it. In August, they revealed a bit under the hood of Google search. Now they put together a 6-minute video that details what has happened since starting as a research project at Stanford in 1996. Major developments such as Adwords and Universal search made the company both more profitable and more useful to the users. Here is the evolution of search as described by the source. Here is their search evolution timeline. Click to…

When I heard that Google had put out their first Google+ television commercial, I was both impressed and a little excited. “Finally,” I thought, “they’re going to make a push to bring Google+ into mainstream consciousness.” I watched the commercial and immediately facepalmed. Despite clear indications from users and bloggers that Google+ Circles is a nice feature but not the thing that would separate it from Facebook, Google continues to highlight it as something special. “Sharing but like real life.” That’s the message. It’s very Applesque in styling and concept. It’s even delivered in…

The future of the internet and computing might be in the cloud, but people are reluctant to give up their hard drives and programs. This has been made clear by the assumed poor performance of the Chromebook line of laptops over the last six months. The most recent price reductions of Acer and Samsung Chromebooks to a base of $299 just prior to Christmas is enough circumstantial evidence to show that we’re just not ready to dish out big bucks for cloud-based computers. Like it or not, we use Microsoft Word. We feel safer storing our pictures on our hard drives. We don’t want to rely on persistent internet…

According to the LA Times, Google+ interest is fading. According to logic, history, and common sense, Google+ is exactly where it needs to be. Lest we forget, Google+ grew to 20 million and then to 50 million users ten times faster than Facebook. “Fading interest” is not a challenge for a site that grew that quickly. It’s a fact that would happen to any site that grew through buzz. Simply stated, buzz excitement is unsustainable. Google knows this. The LA Times and other bloggers apparently do not. Most things are falling into place exactly as Google has predicted. They’ve had some major missteps…

When people talk about mega-deals in the tech industry, it usually involves hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. On Monday, a deal will be announced for $10-$15 million dollars. The waves of this deal will likely be felt by a good portion of the world in the near future. According to the New York Times, Disney Interactive Media and YouTube will be working on original video series in the form of shorts.  They will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. There will be some amateur video pulled in from the plethora of videos uploaded to YouTube…

Original content is the cornerstone of most content channels, but YouTube has been conspicuous over the years as a place for finding unoriginal content. Much of the site is absolutely unique, but there has always been a strong lean towards posting content that originally appeared elsewhere. Google’s push to change this hit a tipping point yesterday as they announced plans to add 100 more channels of unique content to their lineup. Celebrities, news publications, and brands were amongst the channels being created. Name such as Reuters, Jay-Z, and The Onion were amongst the list of those receiving…

Steve Ballmer can never be called shy. Within moments of opening his appearance oat the Web 2.0 Summit this week, he started his offensive against Google with jabs about their Apps cloud collaboration software and Android, then went after the Apple iPhone. As a speaker at the event 2 years ago, Ballmer lauded the recently-released Bing. Yesterday, he noted that Bing’s reach had more than doubled since then, going from 7% market share to 15% itself and twice that when you factor in Bing-powered search such as Yahoo!. “Together with Yahoo, we’re between 25 percent and 30 percent market share,” Ballmer…