Google posts

I was really sorta worried about Google Instant. I thought I was gonna hate it. I thought it would be as bloody irritating as that drop-downy-thing Firefox does before you turn it off. Autocomplete my searches? Get bent, Google. But actually, Google Instant has been the freaking bomb, all live-updating my results n’ junk. Truly, the feature I never knew I wanted. Google, though, isn’t the only service to have been ‘instantized’ in the past week, though. Taking a page from The Goog, programmer Feross Aboukhadijeh decided YouTube could use a lil’ instant, and got to work on exactly that. “My roommate…

Last week, when rumors broke that YouTube might finally become profitable, most of the response was actually pretty snarky. As an example, take the initial post at Slashdot – it suggested that it was about time that YouTube was making some money. If anything, YouTube’s success – which certainly has been a long time coming – seemed like something that was well overdue. But another take on YouTube’s slow, steady move into profitability is a bit different. Instead of snarky, it is optimistic. Why? Well, first is that maybe it had to take this long to create a viable online business model for video; and…

Google has announced a press event for tomorrow, September 8th, to discuss searching. It seems obvious, except recently Google has been about almost everything except search, so it’s worth stating out in the open. The invite alludes to a single large announcement relating to search, and mentions the “evolution of Google search”. Google is certainly rolling out the big guns, with Marissa Mayer, Johanna Wright, Ben Gomes and Othar Hansson leading the event. The event will take place at the Museum Of Modern Art in San Francisco. Some have speculated that the location is an indication that Google…

Though recently it has been the smartphone market that has garnered the most attention in the tech world, the arrival of a revamped – if slightly disappointing – Apple TV is a reminder that the living room is the next big play for digital transformation. Think about it: unlike so many other sectors of society, the living room is one in which traditional approaches to media still largely dominate. DVD sales still dwarf streaming and online video in both numbers and revenue, while the web has yet to make any serious inroads onto people’s TVs. So there is a massive market ready for the taking – if only someone…

Google should seriously rethink its doodles. Nobody is ever going to get anything done! This is the worst thing for productivity since their Google Pac-Man. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ‘buckyball’ (Buckminsterfullerene, for you chemistry buffs), a form of carbon composed of 60 atoms arranged into a soccer ball shape, Google has wizarded their logo, as they have done so many times before, into an animated, interactive buckyball tribute. I’ve seriously been sitting here for ten minutes spinning this damn thing. Google must seriously be trying to collapse the economy….

Your mother used to say it all the time. “Good night honey, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” And yet Google can’t handle that simple warning. “jeepers i am not immune from the bedbug epidemic. bedbugs have been found at work.” Horrible capitalization and spelling aside, that tweet was sent by a marketing employee at Google’s HQ in New York. It seems the company has a small epidemic going on in their sales office there. The Twitter account that posted the message has been deleted, hopefully the poor guy didn’t get fired for it. A Google spokesperson has this to say on the matter: “Like several other…

It must be identity crisis week in the tech industry. No one wants to eat their own lunch anymore, the guy sitting next to you always has a jucier hamburger. This has been covered before, but Google wants to be Apple. Any everyone else. But primarily Apple. Allegedly, the search monster is in talks with music labels to release a service that competes with iTunes. The music industry is more than a little moist at the idea of a company large enough and tech savvy enough to take on Apple and do a better job than Sony, Coke and a number of other try-hards that couldn’t cut it. 70% of digital music is sold by Apple,…

For years now, what web sites do with our data has become a serious problem in the online world. From confusing settings on Facebook – like their recent decision to again set strange defaults in Facebook Places – to online banking, how information about our lives is protected, distributed and use online has become a real issue. The big sticking point? Every individual site has its own rules about how it uses data. That means that not only do users have to carefully parse the user agreements for each site, they have to keep track of any ongoing changes. Think about that: that’s like you having to read…

Let’s face it, even in a world where spam is a daily occurrence, we still receive a load of email that isn’t spam, but might as well be. For example, thanks a bunch Facebook for introducing a messaging system that functions half as well as email AND sends email notifications to alert me to new messages. Google wants to help, and as usual they’re doing it for no other reward than for the joy it will bring their users. The new feature, dubbed “priority inbox” aims to separate our important communications from the stuff that isn’t spam, but might as well be. When an email reaches your inbox, Gmail decides…

So Google is pitching a YouTube pay-per-view service to Hollywood studios that would enable video rentals for five bucks a pop. That’s not… so bad, I guess. I mean, if you’re not already a Netflix convert. But we’ll go over that in a second. YouTube’s pay-per-view is, in fact, not new. Yeah, I was surprised, too. Open since January of this year, YouTube’s rental service has offered video rentals from indie and niche publishers from $1.99 – $3.99. That is nothing if not rad, but so far, no one’s really biting. With only 1500 views in its first weekend (featuring Sundance festival titles), and only…