New Design For Google Account Page

TOMHTML from Zorgloob has found a new design for Google Account page. I don't see any change if I go to my Google Account page, but this will be available soon for everyone. The new design replaces the gray table made in FrontPage with a list of services you use and their logos. For some services, you can change the settings directly from this page. The only problem is that this list will be very big, so I think Google should list only the services you use frequently. This way, you can use this page to go from Google Video to Google Base without typing the URL address.

Related:
Google Passport
Google Links (this feature seems to have been dropped)

Google OS Widget For Opera

If you have the latest version of Opera, you can try a new way to read this blog: Google OS Widget. Read the introduction of each post and decide if you want to read the rest. Next to description, there's a thumbnail that makes you feel better when reading the text.

The latest Google OS Widget includes a special feature: Google Ajax Search, that lets you search the web, find blog posts and videos directly from the widget.

Find more about Opera 9
10 features you'll find only in Opera
If you use IE, you can add a button to Google Toolbar.

Top 10 Tech News Sources

Where do you read the latest tech news? Would you like to see other kinds of news than the rest of the people? I compiled a list of 10 sites where you can find the best news about technology and more.

10. Tailrank
Tailrank monitors blogs to find the most popular posts. For each subject, it shows the most probable source of the news and other blogs that talk about the same subject. Tailrank ranks news by the number of backlinks, which isn't necessarily the best decision.

Today's most important news on Tailrank is "How to tune into BlogerCon" (BlogerCon is a conference about weblogs).

Tailrank also has a politics section, a mobile version, an API and a personalization feature.

9. Spotback
Spotback lets you personalize the news by rating them. You can save the stories, see news from a restricted number of domains. Spotback lets you view the text of the news inline, so you don't have to go to the source if you don't find the news interesting. "Spotback uses sophisticated algorithms that analyze social behavior. These algorithms are designed to harness the power of the entire community for the benefit of the individual user." Unfortunately, the selection of the news is not very good, but it improves over time.

8. Findory
Greg Linden's Findory personalizes the news by looking at the headlines you click on. If you click on a headline or make search, Findory adjusts the news to let you see only relevant content. You can also view the latest posts from your favorite blog and read related posts from other blogs. Unfortunately, you'll see blog posts from last year, as well as low-quality articles.

Findory has many other categories, has sections for videos and podcasts and shows the neighborhood of a blog.

7. Google News
Google News lets you personalize the news, but tends to show mostly news from newspapers and not from blogs. You can get alerts by mail if something interesting happens in a certain domain. The subject grouping doesn't work very good, so you'll sometimes the same subject in many places.

6. Rojo
Rojo is a feed reader that tracks the most read posts and lets you vote for them. You can also tag stories and save them to your account.

Today's most important post on Rojo: "Firefox cheat sheet".

5. Del.icio.us
View the most bookmarked posts today. Most posts have already been on Digg, Slashdot or other popular sites and that's the reason for the sudden popularity.

4. Blogsnow
Blogsnow is based purely on link tracking, it's not only about technology, doesn't have any personalization features, but it's clean, fast and accurate.

3. Techmeme
Techmeme has a similar approach to Tailrank, but does a better ranking of the news. It shows less news and lets you view the archives.

Today's most important new on Techmeme is "Verizon to end service on commercial airplanes".

2. Digg
Digg is like Techmeme, except that articles are manually submitted, and instead of links we have votes. Another difference is that Digg can have on its front page news like "Top 10 strangest gadgets of the past" and tends to be sensationalist and shallow. Breaking news reach fast to the homepage, so Digg is probably the best place to find the latest news.

1. Slashdot
Digg's older relative, Slashdot is the place to see great comments on the most interesting news of the day, usually a couple of hours after you read the news on Digg. Slashdot is like a great talk-show broadcasted one or two hours after the breaking news report. So you'll not be the first to find the news, but you'll learn a lot from the discussion.

0. Popurls
If you don't have time to go to all these sites, or read their feeds, Popurls shows you the latest news from Slashdot, Digg, Google News, Del.icio.us and other sites.


Best customized news: Findory.
Best breaking news: Digg.
Best news ranking: Techmeme.

Some Google Results Are EXE Files

I've posted earlier that you can find all kinds of file types in Google index, including EXE files. Claudiu Spulber reports that you can find innocent-looking sites that redirect to EXE files with spyware.

If you search for ["Signature: 00004550"], you'll find 192,000 results (if Google's count is accurate), mostly executables. Google indexes the file's headers and if you look at the cache, you'll see something like this:

WINDOWS EXECUTABLE
32bit for Windows 95 and Windows NT
Technical File Information:
Image File Header
Signature: 00004550
Machine: Intel 386
Number of Sections: 0003
Time Date Stamp: 3b7dc821
Symbols Pointer: 00000000

What's interesting is that the results have addresses that make you think there's nothing wrong with them (like crcdatatech.com/help), they don't have an EXE extension and when you go to the site you're prompted to download the file. And if you click "run" instead of "save" or "cancel", prepare for the worst.

I think Google should remove all dangerous files from their index (EXE, MSI, COM, REG) and that should be an easy task, as they have a very similar pattern.

Gmail doesn't allow you to attach EXE files or ZIP archives that contain EXE files.

Google Maps + YouTube = Video Map

On Virtual Video Map you can view videos from different corners of the world. The map looks pretty crowded, so you can zoom in to focus on a country or a region. Click on a red balloon and play a video from that country: some videos are touristic, other videos are just funny. You can even find music videos.

Related:
Google Maps + Photos = Panoramia
Free premium videos on Google Video

Think A Different Operating System

You can't install all the operating systems out there. You don't have the time, the energy, the money or the motivation. I mean, your XP seems to work just fine. Why would you install a Linux distribution? And what Linux distribution?

There is a site called OSVids.com that has screencasts from many operating systems, including Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Debian, OpenBSD and Vista. For some of them, you can see the setup, for others the desktop and some basic applications. It's really nice to sit down and compare all these operating systems. Maybe this way you'll decide what Linux distribution you'll install.

Missing from this party are the old versions of Windows (but you probably know them), Mac and Google Operating System (who is not yet ready to be launched).

Related:
Will Linux rule the world? (read the comments)
Partition your hard drive without Partition Magic

Does Google Prepare For IPv6?

Google buys a lot of "dark fiber" (unused fiber-optic capacity) and many people take guesses at their reasons. Alex Lightman, CEO of IP telephony vendor Innofone.com, thinks that Google prepares for IPv6 era. IPv6 will replace IPv4 internet protocol as it will support much more internet addresses. As the number of devices connected to internet grows exponentially, IPv4 + NAT routers will not be enough.

"You know who else has a big pot of slash 20? Google," Lightman said. "Yahoo does too. It's not that service providers aren't doing it — it's the savvy service providers, with the high multiples and visionary management, that are getting ready to go into it. This is why Google bought mobile dark fiber. It's to go out and go: 'All these bozos in America aren't rolling out IPv6, so we'll do it if they aren't going to'."

Another reasons for buying dark fiber might be: Google Video's infrastructure, Google Wi-Fi and Google's data centers.

Panoramio - Google Maps With Photos

You've always wanted to see the world. Panoramio lets you see photos from all around the world on a map. You just have to select a location (like your favorite holiday destination) and you'll see pictures from there located on the map.

Panoramio lets you upload up to 2 Gb of photos in their original size and quality and label them with the place they were taken and some tags. This way, you can upload pictures from your trips and see other people's perspectives on the same places.

Panoramio photos can be viewed in Google Earth too if you download a KML file.

Also see:
Picasa Web Albums (Picasa also has geotagging)
Change the world with Google Earth 4
Google Earth reveals Iran's nuclear sites

What happened to my frame rate!

Ok, I don't mean to boast, but I do have a pretty good graphics card… it’s a NVidia 6800. My PC is no slouch either, and I’ve got plenty of memory, so when I started up the gears.java demo I was expecting a pretty high frame. However, it just didn’t look right. I added some code to the display() function (which gets called to display each frame) and I was getting 60FPS... Hold the phone!!!!

if(nFrame++ > 200) {
  if(nLastUpdate != 0) {
    long nTimeMS = System.currentTimeMillis() - nLastUpdate ;
    System.out.println(nFrame + " in " + nTimeMS + "msec (" +
      nFrame * 1000 / nTimeMS + " FPS)") ;
  } 
  nFrame = 0 ;
  nLastUpdate = System.currentTimeMillis() ;
}

60FPS…um… that is my monitor refresh rate (I’ve got an LCD). Ahhh, now I remember… Vertical retrace! To stop frames from tearing while being display most OpenGL implementations pause and wait for the monitors Vertical Retrace Interrupt before updating the image. Usually, it’s a pain to turn this off in OpenGL but in JOGL it’s easy. If you want to pull the maximum frame rate just set the "swap interval" to 0 in the init() function.

public void init(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
  GL gl = drawable.getGL();
  gl.setSwapInterval(0);
  …
}

1100 FPS … That’s better, now that’s what I like to see!

Development Environment

I use Eclipse for all my Java development. In fact which all it's difference plugins Eclipse is pretty a pretty good development environment for most things, I also use it for PHP, ASP and C/C++ on Linux. I found the following website by Martin John Baker that does a good job of describing the setting up of the Eclipse IDE enviroment for JOGL. Basically, for setting up a simple Java JOGL Application

1. Download the "jogl.jar" and the platform native libraries like "jogl-natives-macosx-universal.jar".
   
2. Create a new Java project.
3. In "project | Properties | Java Build Path" add the "jogl.jar" library.
4. Then the tricky bit, add the native libraries. They come is a "jar" from the JOGL website so you may have to extract the DLL's (so's for linux, etc) from the JAR and place them in a new directory. Then just add the path as described in the Martin's web page. i.e. Select the "Native library location" and set it to the location of your DLL's.
   
   
   


5. Add some code. I used the "gears.java" class from the demos that come with JOGL.

Ads On Google Video

Google will start to include ads on Google Video this week, reports InfoWorld. Google will display an image ad for the duration of a video and a video ad after the clip ends for premium videos you would normally pay to view.

The test will run for a week: only 2,000 videos from important providers will have ads and only 5 advertisers will have ads on Google Video.

It's obvious that Google will integrate ads from Video AdSense into Google Video, as they share the same interface and distribution. The good thing is that the ad will be displayed after the video ends, and not before playing it, like most other video services. The bad thing is that the video ad is not a separate video, it's part of the video you are watching.

Update: here's the link to watch premium videos for free (including Charlie Rose, Felix the Cat and wrestling videos).

Unboring Company Descriptions On MSN Search

Let's face it. If you google a company name, the first result, which is the company's homepage, has a boring description. Search "Yahoo" and you'll get:
"The first large scale directory of the Internet, now a major portal offering search engine results."

MSN Search is not like that. It may not be a good search engine, but when it comes to company names, MSN Search knows how to handle the situation. You'll find out insiders' information, their latest problems and their address with one search. Let's see.

Yahoo!
Yahoo!'s webservers exclusively run FreeBSD. In addition, all the non-production servers and developer workstations run FreeBSD.

AOL.com
Founded in 1985 to provide interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services. Part of AOL Time Warner. Based in Dulles, Loudoun County, Virginia.

Sun Microsystems
High-speed microprocessors, scalable systems, robust software, network storage, 901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303

HP
Provides embedded ethernet controllers, embedded internet, IEEE 1451.2, thin web servers, and time synchronization for smart sensors in distributed measurement and control system architectures.

Oracle Corporation
Oracle RDBMS support on MPE/iX ends December 31, 2000.

You Can't Ask For Anything More From Ask.Com

If you go to ask.com and type some queries, you'll get this message: "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service".

Here's a list of some queries that return this message:
sexy girls
Belgium's laws on pedophilia
laws on pedophilia
sex with kids
sex of a child
pedophilia
anti-pedophilia
child sex abuse
zoophilia
blocking porn from kids
any query that contains child and sex, kids and sex

I think this is not a good idea: those who want to search for these things will go to another search engine. Besides, some people may just want to make some research on "laws on pedophilia". If you ban queries like that, you'll have to ban others: "how to make a bomb", terrorists or "suicide tips" and the list will never end.

Update: If you search for "pedaphilia", Ask suggests searches like "girl love pedophilia", "child porn", and "preteen girl virgin".

{June 27 update} Here's Gary Price's response:

It's really a legacy issue from the Ask Jeeves days. Much of it having to do with the one time licensing agreement between our company and the "Mr Jeeves" Woodhouse licensing organization. It was far from an ideal situation and far from perfect filtering.

The good news is that with Mr. Jeeves gone, these issues no longer apply. So, as Lanzone pointed out earlier, you'll see big changes beginning later this week.

Actually, changes have been developing for a few months. Here's an example.

Shortly after I started working at Ask.com (in March) a librarian colleague sent me a note asking why her organization and other info about a topic wasn't found in Ask. These terms were on what we'll call the "legacy" list of filtered terms. It was not a long list. When I was alerted to this problem I immediately contacted Ask.com management and the terms were searchable within a matter of days. Now, as we move forward, this issue is being resolved (as Jim points out).

Also see:
Google sued for promoting child pornography

Google File System Patent

Google has a patent for a "Leasing scheme for data-modifying operations". If we look closely at the abstract, we'll notice that the patent refers to Google File System (PDF), "a scalable distributed file system for large distributed data-intensive applications".

"A system may facilitate performance of a data-modifying operation in a file network that includes multiple servers that store replicas of data. One of the servers may serve as a primary replica for one of the replicas of data and at least one other one of the servers may serve as at least one secondary replica for the replica of data. The system may send data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica based on a network topology and independently send a data-modifying control signal that requests execution of the data-modifying operation using the data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica."

The file system deals with error detection, fault tolerance, automatic recovery and files that have more than 1GB. This is one of the most important assets of Google and this is responsable for you not losing your mails when a disk failure happens in one of the machines that store your documents.

{ Via Search Engine Watch. }

Links

Useful links for developing JOGL application.

• OpenGL


• JOGL homepage


• Setting up eclipse


• Jumping into JOGL


• 3D Matrix Math Demystified

Introduction

After years of writing OpenGL applications in C or C++ I have finally decided to try my hand at one of the many Java OpenGL API's. I have been programming in Java for many years, but I never really thought about using it for OpenGL, as I always thought it would be too slow. One of my mates at work was using LWJGL to do some stuff and I was pretty impressed by what he could do using Java, so I thought it's about time to give it a go.

I have decided to try JOGL for a number of reasons, but mainly because it seems to have better support for OpenGL 2.0 and all those neat OpenGL extensions that make modern 3D graphics look so good and seems to have a bit better Java community support. I could be wring, that's what I'm here to find out. So, I have set up this Blog to record my notes and programs, however, my hope is that you (yes YOU!) may also find this useful or even be able to help me out with suggestions or your experience. Anyway, we'll see how I go...

Windows Live Mail Desktop Review

Windows Live Mail Desktop, currently in beta, is a replacement for Outlook Express, although you won't find it in Vista. The program looks so similar to the Live Mail site that it's hard to notice you're actually using a software. This is probably the first program built from the interface of a web application.

The first thing that strikes you after installing the program is that you have to sign in with your Windows Live (MSN) account. You can ad more accounts later (and even your Gmail account, that is just a regular POP3 account).

WLMD has a 3-columns interface: the navigation, mails and contextual web results and ads. If you click on a mail, the programs scans the text of the mail, finds the most relevant keywords and shows the first web results for each one of them along with some ads from Microsoft adCenter.

The program has a feed reader, but it doesn't work unless you have Internet Explorer 7. That means it just reads the feeds from IE7.

I imported all mails from Gmail to test the speed of WLMD and I must say it's fast. But fast doesn't necessarily mean smart. The program sent a lot of random mail to the Junk folder, mostly short mails.

The attachments are very easy to miss. The icon is very far away from the mail and should have been replaced with the name of the files.


The search function works fast, but it doesn't highlight the results in the mail body.

You can compose more mails at once, attach files using drag-and-drop, forward more than one mail, insert photos directly into the message.

You don't have advanced options like "see the raw mail", filters are created as non-intuitive as in Outlook Express, while contacts are added through Live Messenger.

While WLMD is an improvement to Outlook Express, it lacks a powerful spam filter, a contact management feature, mail threading and a real desktop look-and-feel. Plus it needs a lot of RAM (on average, 70 MB, which is too much for a mail client).

Here's the direct link for Live Mail Desktop (13.5 MB).

More Windows Live:
Live Messenger review
Live Mail review
Live Toolbar is impressive

Adobe Bundles Google Toolbar

Until recently, Adobe Reader included Yahoo Toolbar as an option to install. Macromedia Flash Player gives users the chance to download Yahoo Toolbar. Now Adobe has signed a multiyear agreement with Google to redistribute Google Toolbar with most free Adobe products.

Adobe says that Google Toolbar is offered for the moment to users who download Macromedia Shockwave Player from Internet Explorer. I can't confirm this, since the upgrade to Shockwave player crashed my browser.

Related:
Google Toolbar 4.0 Beta
Windows Live Toolbar shines
So what's the connection between Flash and a toolbar? Maybe money?

Pay-Per-Action AdSense

David Jackson reports he got a mail from AdSense team that invited him to test some "ads that are compensated based on a Cost-Per-Action [CPA] basis".

What does this mean? You get paid if someone clicks on the ad and performs an action (like buying the product). These ads won't compete with the regular pay-per-click ads and will be on a separate network.

I think a product should be really good and very well promoted to make me buy it the first time I see an ad. Most people compare different products and read reviews before making a purchase.

{ Via Blogoscoped. }

Google Lacks Stickiness

"Google is kind of a metaphor for investing today. People want a short-term fix and they want something that has momentum," says Fred Kobrik, a successful growth fund managers, for CNN Money. He doesn't recommend buying Google's stocks.

Kobrik also says the competition in search market is not over as "winners often come from behind and original leaders wind up running into problems". He talks about companies like Apple or products like Lotus that were once market leaders.

Kobrik thinks that Google launches too many products just as experiments. "Google's throwing a lot of mud against the wall to see what sticks. That's pretty scary."

"Google has no ability to lock in users the way Microsoft and Yahoo have. Google has had a lot of success but they look a lot like the old Xerox to me." Google has a big user base in search, but these users don't find the other Google products as attractive. Google didn't create a real community, like Yahoo or Microsoft have done, so the users that come to Google for the great search engine may easily go elsewhere if another great search engine launches.

Search engines' user base is volatile.

Crazypack - Collection Of Portable Software

Crazypack is a collection of essential portable* software designed to be included on a small USB drive. It only occupies 12MB and includes:

* Opera 9
* Google Talk instant messenger
* Small CD Writer
* Steganos LockNote, that saves notes and encrypts them
* PuTTY, a free implementation of Telnet and SSH
* A very nice launcher, that lets you select the program you want to launch, indexes the programs in Start Menu and gives information about the system (CPU, memory, HD space, display).

Although the selection of programs in this collection is subjective, the nice about this package is that you can include any portable program you want. Just save it in a subfolder of the usb folder and include an entry in PStart.xml file.

You can find many other portable applications at Wikipedia.

* A portable application is a computer program that doesn't need a setup to be installed. It can be stored on a removable storage such as a USB flash drive and used on multiple computers.

Windows Live Messenger Out Of Beta

The same day when Yahoo Messenger 8 Beta launched, Windows Live Messenger came out of beta. Is this a coincidence?

Let's install the software. If you do that, you'll see there are a lot of opt-out options and bundles.



You'll also notice that Live Messenger cloned Yahoo Messenger interface. If Yahoo has Launchcast, Microsoft has Rhapsody Radio (but you have to pay for it). Both have an ad and a search bar at the bottom of the window.


So what's new in Windows Live Messenger?

* Live folders - share files with your contacts and synchronize the updates.

* Live contacts - update your contact card and it updates for everyone you want it to.

* PC-to-PC calling.

* PC-to-phone calls: sign up for service with Verizon.

* Video calling: 640x480 videos.

* Live Messenger will offer users a sneak-peak at the upcoming Walt Disney movie release "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest," as well as an online video game based on the movie.

Live Messenger will replace MSN Messenger, that will still be available for users that have older versions of Windows.

Yahoo Messenger - Live Messenger interoperability is not yet available.

You can see a video that shows the new features of the Live Messenger and they are described by a member of Live Messenger team.

Download Windows Live Messenger (15.3 MB, requires Windows XP).

Yahoo Messenger 8 Lets You Add Plug-ins

Yahoo Messenger 8 Beta adds more features to the over-bloated interface. If you look closely at the screenshot (click to enlarge), you'll barely see the contacts. On the other hand, the plug-ins that replace the tabs are quite visible.

The plug-ins can be built using JavaScript and Flash on top of Yahoo! Messenger Plug-in SDK. Plug-ins run in the main Messenger window, or as part of an IM conversation. Yahoo Messenger includes 3 plug-ins: Yahoo 360 (Yahoo's social network), Yahoo Answers and Launchcast, but you can add more from the gallery.

Yahoo invites developers to "create plug-ins that are as simple as an HTML web page, or as sophisticated as a map collaboration tool that uses ActiveX, Flash, DHTML, AJAX or any other browser-based technology."

There's also a new shortcut: Windows Key + Y that shows the main window of the Messenger and lets you type the name of a contact (or the first letters as it auto-completes) you want to talk to.

Plus a new message under the status: "Microsoft LCS Status". Is this a sign of Yahoo Messenger - Live Messenger interoperability?


Download Yahoo Messenger 8 from Softpedia (direct link to setup, no bundles) or Yahoo.

Related:
Remove ads from Yahoo Messenger

Opera 9 - Failed Launch

Opera released Opera 9, available in 30 languages and including many new features: support for BitTorrent, widgets and site preferences.

Since the first beta many things have changed in Opera, and not for the better. Widgets can be accessed in the Widgets menu and every widget creates a new entry in the taskbar. Unfortunately, you can't control the window from the taskbar. Widgets have a smoother font, but are somewhat buggier that in the beta version.

Some sites that still don't work: the chat in Gmail, Yahoo Mail Beta, Google Calendar, Blogger's toolbar (that worked in find in Beta 1).

Opera 9 implements many features available in Firefox and tries to catch up in the market share arena. Unfortunately, Opera seems to duplicate Firefox's memory problems: Opera 9 uses more RAM than ever.

On the bright side, there's Atom support, Web Forms 2.0, SVG, improved security and better XMLHttpRequest support.

* Download Opera 9
* Opera 9 changelog
* Google Operating System widget

Related:
10 features you'll only find in Opera
What's new in Firefox 2

World Cup Extension For Firefox

Google has developed an extension for Firefox that integrates with the social network Joga and allows you to view the latest scores from the World Cup, videos of the best goals, and talk with other fans about your favorite teams.

You can view the score of the latest match in the status bar. The extension will alert you when a goal is scored.



There's also a scoreboard that includes the upcoming matches and the most important news about World Cup. You can select the flag of your team to customize Firefox theme.

The best news about this extension? Google intends to release as open source the underlying framework and code they developed to build Joga Companion (that's the name of the extension).

Related:
World Cup results on Google.com

Google Design Experiment Redux

Cristian Streng found a version of a new design experiment for Google results pages. Every result is expandable, and, if expanded, Google shows an extended snippet, related links and important links from the site. Note that the second screenshot was obtained by searching [Google].

Other experiments:
Extended snippets | Top result | Left navigation on SERP | New homepage.

Google Will Localize All Its Products

PC World reports that Google wants to localize all its products and soon, if possible ahead of the competition.

"Internet users outside of the US may soon be able to access all of Google's products, many of which are currently available only in limited regions, if an executive search by the company is successful.

The University of Limerick, in the west of Ireland, has been asked by Google and an executive search firm to help find an experienced localization guru to head up an initiative to internationalize all of Google's products."

Google has 112 international domains so it's not a trivial task, but that will make many people happy. And it will bring many new users.

Maximum Size Of Gmail Attachments

Google says "you can send and receive messages up to 10 megabytes (MB) in size" in Gmail. "However, the precise amount allowable will depend on the attachment. When you add an attachment, the size of a file may increase because transport encodings are automatically added. (Transport encodings are the information that allows your message to be safely sent and read.)"

Sometimes Gmail lets you attach files whose total size exceeds the 10 MB. So I managed to attach more than 12 MB.


Did you manage to attach more than 12 MB in Gmail?

Update: From May 2007, the maximum attachment size in Gmail is 20 MB.

Related Gmail tips:
5 fast ways to check your Gmail account
Check multiple Gmail accounts

Google's Strengths

Robert X. Cringely wrote an interesting article last year about Google's strengths:

"Google's strengths are searching, development of Open Source Internet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands of servers.

[In Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View], in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid."

The giant Google PC will be able to run Office applications, deliver Internet TV, and perform transactions. "Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound". The data center will be close to you, so the latency will be reduced, you don't need to install anything, the service is free, it works fast and it requires only a Google Account.

GPS Google Ads On Radio

Eric Schmidt thinks that "when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store."

The GPS system should help radios deliver targeted ads based on information about the person. Google Maps could provide details about local businesses, the ads would be audio AdSense ads, while the information about user's needs could be obtained from the searches or from his ToDo lists (a gadget for Google Desktop and Personalized Homepage).

dMarc Broadasting, recently acquired by Google, "connects advertisers and agencies directly to radio stations with a robust advertising platform that automates everything from sales to scheduling, delivery and report". So this company is the first brick in the development of a new breed of radio advertising.

Related:
Interactive Google TV

Billions Of Spam Pages Indexed By Google

I reported yesterday about two spam sites that have billions of pages in Google's index. It seems other people have spotted them too and the story is on Digg.

Here are some queries for which the sites rank really well:



pizza sauce recipe (#10)



profiling racial war (#1)



san jose mission earthquake (#1)



google product manager interview (#4)



grill steak cooking (#3)

Update: Google has removed the sites from the index. Hopefully, they tweaked the algorithms to prevent other similar situations.