Your Old Documents Weren't Yours

Picture this: you write all your documents in Microsoft Office. You have important information, presentations and research data.

In 30 years from now, Microsoft Office will be history, Microsoft will not exist anymore, computers will be smaller than our mobile phones and extremely powerful.

Remember your Office documents? Well, no one use them anymore, Google has a very powerful Office suite Mindly that has support for mind reading, automatic translation and spell checking, conceptual summarizing and online brainstorming. This application doesn't read the deprecated doc files, and no one complains. Most people have converted their Office documents to the new formats many years ago. Including yourself.

But you discover you've still got some important documents on a backup disk. Nobody can find you a Windows system with Office. And you stare at the binary files with your great ideas. The proprietary formats were once reverse-engineered, but Microsoft destroyed all the information about that.

So now, 30 years before that, you can make a choice. In what format do you save your documents? XML, text files and PDF documents are a better choice.

{ This is not a Sci-Fi text. }

Surrender Your Privacy to DoJ

"The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so," reports New York Times.

America Online, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast representatives met with FBI's director, Robert S. Mueller III, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. While the US Department of Justice didn't ask the companies to give them users' data, they want that Internet companies keep the data in a standard format and for at least two years. DoJ wants "information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures", that means data related to Web searches and e-mail exchanges.

Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, is concerned with the financial aspect: "The Department of Justice has yet to tell us what they want us to store. If they decide they want us to store everything, there isn't a storage facility in the U.S. large enough to store that." But the real problem is the ISPs: they should keep track of users' online activity and they will be much more cooperating than Google, for example.

Related:
Bush administration requests data from Google
DOJ doesn't give up on Google's data
Google to face off with DoJ over releasing data

Google Passport

Does Google want to create a Google Passport, like Microsoft did (now Microsoft Passport is called Windows Live ID)? If you login to your Google Account and go to My Account, you'll see a strange link that says Change authorized websites and points to a page that gives an error: "Currently there are no third party sites authorized to access your account."

So that means in the future third party sites will be able to access my account? There are many Firefox extensions that ask my Google username and password to check my mail or my bookmarks. Using this simple sign-on, you'll be able to authenticate once and have access to other sites that use the same authentication service. It's easy to have less accounts, but these third-party sites will have access to your personal data.

Microsoft Passport has failed to gain too much market share, the only major sites that use this authentication sytem are Expedia and Hoyts. Microsoft Passport was supposed to be used as a central repository for personal information, including credit card details.

New Google Homepage Experiment

Keith Chan has discovered a new Google homepage whick looks extremely well. The search options include Books, Video and are placed below the search box. I think Google realized that most people search the web from its homepage, so the other types of search aren't extremely important. I wonder where do you go if you click "More you can do with Google"?

{ Merci beaucoup, TomHTML. }

Will Linux Rule the World?

I posted earlier that Google builds Linux ports for Picasa and Google Earth, or actually improves Wine to support them. The post has generated interesting comments:

What I said:

"Many Linux users think Google should build native versions for their software, instead of using Wine, but if Wine becomes powerful enough to run (almost) any Windows software everyone will gain: more people will adopt Linux because they can use their favorite applications and companies will have a wider audience for their software."

What my readers think:

"And the software would suck as much as it does on Windows. The idea of Linux is to have a better alternative to Windows. Not to implement all their design-mistakes."

"Personally, I am not a member of the audience of those companies. And be sure - your favorite applications will never make it to my desktop. Picasa managed to stay about 30 minutes, just enough to make sure that it completely sucks."

"A lot of applications exist in the windows world, and/or are superior to their Linux counterparts, simply because of the larger user base it enjoys. I'm all in favor of getting Wine to be as powerful as possible, since application support is the only reason to use Windows. When Wine becomes perfect, that's not an argument anymore."

Linux has many applications that are clones of Windows applications (for example, XMMS is a Winamp clone), so if you could run the same setup on Windows and Linux, install the applications and use them, you wouldn't need to build native versions for each operating system. Of course, in an ideal world, you would have the source code for every application, you would compile it for your platform and run your optimized version.

Another problem for Linux is hardware support. I found a Linux distribution (PCLinuxOS) that has different builds for different graphics cards, but I couldn't find another Linux distribution that works on my Acer notebook: all crash in the setup phase. Ok, maybe I didn't try every distribution, but I tried to install Ubuntu, Gentoo, Mandriva, Slackware and many other small ones. I'll keep burning boot CDs and DVDs until I find a decent distribution that works with my notebook.

I think open source it's great, but most users don't want open-source software. They use Firefox because it's fast, secure and better than Internet Explorer, not because they can find the source code and change it. So we shouldn't say: I don't like Picasa because it's not open-source. It's Google's decision and that shouldn't influence our opinion about the software itself, which has a very nice interface and it's very easy to use.

So how do you think Linux will rule the world? Or, at least, my world and my notebook's world?

Mobile Google Calendar

Google Calendar has some new features:

* if you're in the US, you can access your calendar from your mobile phone. You just have to send a SMS to 48368 (GVENT) with the text "next" to see the upcoming events. Send "day" to get all of your scheduled events for the present day and "nday" to get all of your events for the following day. You can even create events, just send the details in a format similar to this: "Go to dinner at Chef Cafe tomorrow at 9pm".

* Google Calendar has support for Verizon carrier.

* integration with Gmail for your domain, Google's hosted mail service.

The next features will be synchronizing with mobile phones and PDAs.

Google Search API 2.0

Google has created Google AJAX Search API, a JavaScript library that allows you to embed many flavors of Google Search into your site: Web Search, Local Search, Video and Blog Search. You can combine the search results from all these sources to obtain a beautiful sidebar like this. What's really nice is that you can customize the search box, the sources and the search is triggered on page load. Users of the site can use the search results to paste them in comments or other user-generated content.

Google AJAX Search API supports Firefox, Safari, and IE 6, it's still in an early phase of development and it's likely that it will include ads in the final release. This is probably the best API ever released by Google and it will certainly be more succesful than Google Maps mashups.

So it seems that Google tries hard to open its content to sites - they launched many APIs lately: GData, AdSense API, and now this very powerful Search API.

{Thank you, Garrett French }

Google Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can save you a lot of time, especially if you do a task many times. Google web applications have shortcuts and it's a good idea to learn them. Don't worry, most of them are pretty intuitive.

Let's start with Gmail. If you press "c", you'll compose a new message; if you use "r", you'll reply to the current message. You can move to the next conversations using "k".

In Google Calendar, you can create an event using "c" or if you want add the event quickly type "q". View your agenda by pressing "a".

Google Video has very simple shortcuts: press space to pause a video and once again to resume it, use right/left arrows to go forward/backward in the video and up/down arrows to change the volume. To mute the video press "m".

In Google Maps, you can use the arrows to move in the map, "+" to zoom in to the map and "-" to zoom out of the map.

From Smallwire.

Investor Conference Call

Google had an Investor Update Conference Call yesterday. You can read the transcript. Some of the interesting questions are highlighted below:

* Google doesn't want to compete with eBay, they just want to automate the process of buying products advertised in AdSense

* Google doesn't intend to develop a browser and recommends alternatives to Internet Explorer

* There isn't a connection between the Dell deal and the integration of MSN Search in IE7, Eric Schmidt says.

So here are the most interesting 3 answers.

Regarding Google Wallet:

Mark Mahaney - Citigroup

The question I was alluding to on the beta test was that we saw some news that some testers out there are testing shopping from high-quality merchants for products like iPods, music cell phones. People are wondering, is that some sort of version of an eBay Express or an Amazon functionality?

Jonathan Rosenberg - Google

In general, the answer to that question is no. We have been working to automate the advertiser click cycle. In other words, what we want to do is the moment the customer decides to purchase something, we want to make that as fast as we possibly can.

Google does have what is generally known as a payment system that would enable that. But it’s not the kind of payment system that eventually results in the kind of product that you’re describing. Think of as much more advertiser automation, very much focused on making the advertiser satisfaction much higher. Advertisers will see quicker returns, more click-throughs, better conversions, and then the rest is history.

Regarding Google Browser:

Douglas Anmuth - Lehman Brothers

Does it makes sense for Google to build a browser? Given the Company’s focus on increasing distribution and the three goals that you identified at your recent Analyst Day of improving the brand, increasing market share, and providing a platform for future products, why doesn’t it makes sense to build a browser, particularly one that ties together multiple Google products?

I know that you want to develop products and technology that serve an unfilled need online. A browser is also one that could potentially drive material share gains in search and also be highly strategic in light of IE7 and Vista. Thank you.

Eric Schmidt

We would make the decision based on what end users want, and not based on some strategic calculation that we made about competitors. The industry is obsessed with this browser question. Our observation is that you have a number of fine browsers now, and people have some good choices. We have a very, very active partnership with the Firefox folks. IE7 is coming out and, in response to competition from Firefox, has gotten better. Safari, which is the Apple browser, looks like a very strong offering in the Mac space. So it looks like people have some good browser choices already.

The way Google operates is we would not build a browser for the fun of building a browser and creating another choice. By the way, I omitted Opera and a few others that are also very interesting. We would only do something along the lines you are describing if we thought there was a real end-user benefit.

So far we have seen the end-user benefit has been to augment or expand both Ajax and JavaScript, which is available on all the browsers. We’re working very, very closely, as I mentioned, with Firefox. We have a good partnership with Safari and with Opera and a couple of others as well. That seems like a good answer right now for us, strategically.

Regarding Windows Vista:

Mark Rowen - Prudential

Eric, you have been pretty vocal about Vista and the new version of Internet Explorer that is coming out, and your thoughts that it might put you at some sort of disadvantage.

I wonder if you could give us a big picture perspective on specifically what you don’t like about that? The settings and things. What kind of advantages might Microsoft get from that, what sort of disadvantages might it put you at?

Then, in the context of the Dell deal, how much does that alleviate that pressure?

Eric Schmidt

I’m not sure how vocal we have been. Vista is scheduled to ship in 2007, and we’ll see how it actually comes out. There’s a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to change what they are doing based on customer feedback and other factors.

As they currently reported, there is a default setting in Internet Explorer 7, which, if the default setting is not set, is then set to Microsoft Search. We want to make sure that the use of the power of Windows is done in a correct and legally appropriate way. That’s a concern.

With respect to the Dell deal, the Dell deal was really driven by this end-user focus issue and not about the Vista issue. Again, Google’s brand and usage and products are very, very strong. So this is a specific point. But certainly, Vista is a product that people have been waiting for, for a long time. We’ll see how successful it is in integrating search in the various places that they claim they are going to be doing.

Mark Rowen - Prudential

So assuming that they don’t change that, and the default settings for those that are not set, move people to MSN Search instead of Google Search, do you think that that’s a big disadvantage for you? Or do you think that it’s not such a big deal in the final scheme of things?

Eric Schmidt

Well, it’s an example of the increasing competition. We at Google are very, very focused on having the very best search. So hopefully, if that were to occur, people would naturally see that our product is that much better.

Reply by Chat in Gmail

If you get a message from someone in Gmail and you see it online in Gmail Chat, you can click "Reply by Chat" at the bottom of the message instead of Replying by mail. This useful if your reply is short or you want to make sure it has a big visibility.

When using this feature, the replies are grouped with conversations.

More at Gmail Help Center.

AdSense API: Social Networks Revenue Engine

As reported before, AdSense API is a service for community-driven sites that lets the users of the sites integrate their AdSense accounts and manage them. It's useful for social networks, blog hosting or web publishing sites that have more than 100,000 page views a day.

Sites will be able to:
* programmatically display ads
* show search boxes
* add referral buttons
* filter ads with specific URLs
* generate reports on AdSense accounts

So they'll be able to do exactly the same things as Google AdSense site.

AdSense API uses SOAP, so there is support for many programming languages, including PHP, Perl, Java, C#.

This new Google API will boost the growth of many startups and Web 2.0 sites. Imagine Digg uses AdSense API: the site will display ads next to your submitted story and you'll get 50% from the revenue. That means users will submit more good stories and less spam blogs.

Easter egg: guess who was the first beta tester for AdSense API? Blogger.

Morfik Claims Google Infriged Its Intellectual Property

Google has released this month Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a Java-to-JavaScript compiler useful for developing Ajax applications. Morfik is a company that has a similar product called Javascript Synthesis Technology (JST). Web 2.0 Explorer has a press release in which Morfik says:

"In October 2005 Morfik's JST was featured at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, California and immediately attracted the attention of leading search engine providers and software development organizations, including founders and top officers from some very large companies. In a number of instances, persons recognizing the potential in the JST innovation and its implications for their own organization's applications requested special more detailed presentations to their engineers or gained access to additional confidential information about JST.

Morfik as the owner of this ground-breaking innovation and technology is committed to protecting all of its rights, working closely with interested organizations to share its learning and innovations related to JST and to enter into appropriate licensing arrangements with such organizations to govern their use of JST."

Morfik seems to imply that Google ("leading search engine provider") stole their ideas, as they had access to confidential information about their compiler. Google has enough great engineers to develop products like that, and, most likely, they had to reuse a lot of code in their Ajax applications (Gmail, Calendar, Maps) so they decided to create a tool that makes writing the code easier.

Synchronize Google Calendar With Outlook

Remote Calendars is a COM-.NET Add-in for Outlook 2003 that allows you to subscribe, reload and delete a remote iCalendar. This open-source has added support for Google Calendars, and except for some limitations, you can now synchronize Google Calendar with Outlook 2003.

How you should do:
1) Make a new empty folder and subscribe your Google Calendar in that folder, and select the checkbox "It's my Google Calendar and I want to sync both ways"
2) After that, you can both add appointments or edit them, and the you can publish back to Google (see the help for finding the correct URL for publishing), by checking the CheckBox "It's a Google Calendar URL"
3) You're done... you can try to modify the appointments from Google and reload them back to Outlook, or viceversa...

Limitations:
1) Recurrent events don't work, so if you publish event with recurrence from Outlook, in Google they'll be without recurrence.
2) Don't subscribe any other iCalendar in the same folder.

The software doesn't work with Outlook 2007 Beta. If you encounter problems, read this thread.

More:
Synchronize Google Calendar with your phone
Synchronize Google Calendar with iPod
Popular calendars to import in Google Calendar
Google Calendar gadget for Google Desktop

Why Plagiarism Makes You Feel Sad

So you have to write something interesting, something that will make a nice impression to your audience (readers of your blog, your class mates, the staff at the meeting). You know it must be really great, but you don't have any inspiration. You don't have too much time to write the text, so there's a lot of pressure. In fact, what great things can you write when all the great things have already been written? All the ideas that cross your mind are rejected as "not interesting" or "already done". You look around and nothing inspires you. Time goes by and you still haven't written anything.

So you go to Google, type the subject of your article and get a text written by someone else. It's so easy, you don't even have to read it, just put your name next to it in a selfish attempt to gain some appreciation.

Maybe people will never discover your theft, or maybe they just wouldn't care. But how do you feel about that? Breathe deeply and say: do you feel content? Did you do anything to use your knowledge to make the world better? Did you discover anything? You're lazy, selfish and dishonest. But are you also untalented? Don't be a void echo, build an identity and earn your signature!

AdSense API To Be Launched

"RateItAll.com, a leading social network and review community, announces that it has leveraged the just released Google AdSense API to enable revenue sharing for its contributing members."

But wait a minute... what AdSense API? Let's read more.

"Pioneering online community and social network RateItAll.com today announced that it had integrated Google AdSense into its service via an API in order to share advertising inventory with RateItAll members.

By leveraging the Google AdSense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google AdSense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site."

So that means the yet-unlaunched AdSense API will let community sites integrate AdSense ads for its members.

"Several months ago I approached Google about our vision of transforming RateItAll into a marketplace for content in which ad inventory was shared by all contributors," said RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn. "Not only did Google thoroughly grasp what we were trying to, they had already begun development on the API that would help make this vision a reality."

"We're going to allow every RateItAll member to submit their own AdSense account number to their RateItAll registration information. Once an AdSense account number is associated with a RateItAll reviewer account, that RateItAll reviewer will immediately begin sharing advertising revenue on qualifying pages." says RateItAll. In most cases, members will earn 50% of the advertising revenue.

AdSense API blog is listed on Eric Case's profile, among many other Google blogs.

{ Via Eric Giguere. }

Google Video Has Movie Previews

Google Video has a collection of trailers from movies now playing in theaters and from movies that will launch later this year. You can find the disappointing Da Vinci Code, Mission Impossible III action movie or my favorite: United 93, a very good movie about September 11, 2001. Also check the trailer for Superman Returns.

Google should integrate these trailers with Google Movie Search and they will deliver a great experience.

Google Impressed by a New Search Algorithm

Google has bought the rights for a search algorithm developed by Ori Allon, a student at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The Age reports that Rob Pike, who is a Google engineer, was very excited about the algorithm. "This is the first time I've walked out and said: 'Wow! We should buy this stuff'. So it's pretty unique".

Orion's algorithm displays an extended snippet from each result, so you don't have to visit the site to get the answer you need.

Eric Schmidt told in a interview that Google will make "heavy, heavy investment in new search algorithms" to improve the quality of Google search.

Google still didn't decide if they integrate Orion's algorithm in their web search or they release it as a new product.

Google Talk Started Simple

Big things should start simple. Draw the sketch, define the important lines, see the big picture. Test the simple project, accept ideas while the project is still manageable and enjoy the simplicity. Google Talk is an example of a very simple program that does a lot without a bloated interface.

Designers rarely get to work on their dream projects. When I was researching instant messaging in grad school, the prospect of designing a new instant messaging product was fanciful at best. When I came to Google, the odds improved a bit. When I became the designer on Google Talk, it still didn't quite seem real until we launched today.

Google Talk is far from perfect, but it's a start, and we chose to start with simplicity. Big plans are in the works, but for now I'm enjoying it for what it is. Hope you do too.

(Chad Thornton, Google Talk team -
on the day Google Talk was launched, August 24 2005)

Google Earth For Linux Soon

After Picasa, another Google software (well at least Google-owned software) will be ported to Linux: Google Earth. From LinuxToday:

"Picasa, founded in 2001, was purchased by Google in July of 2004, and the photo management tool has seen some extensive use, albeit from Windows users. DiBona indicated that Google made a public committment to begin porting two applications to Linux about a year ago. The other application in this project is Google Earth. Picasa for Linux was announced first simply because it was finished first.

When asked if the additions to WINE would bootstrap Google Earth's porting progress, DiBona answered in the negative, explaining that Google Earth relied on Qt and GL libraries and code, so additional WINE support would not help. No timeline for that application's release was revealed at this time."

If these applications are succesful, Google will port other programs: Google Talk, SketchUp or maybe even Google Desktop.

Dave Kegel, who works at Google, wrote an interesting mail in the Wine developers group:

"Many people assume that when porting a Windows app to Linux using Wine, the best thing to do is link Winelib into the application to create a native Linux application. Not so! It's just as effective, and a heck of a lot easier, to run the same binary on both Windows and Wine. So that's what the Picasa team did. Picasa for Linux uses slightly different text messages, but the .exe file is identical for both Windows and Linux.

The Picasa for Linux team had a blast. It's not often you get to pour resources into a vital open source project to help ship a commercial application! We hope we get to do it again sometime soon, and we hope the results are good enough to encourage other companies to give Wine a try."

Many Linux users think Google should build native versions for their software, instead of using Wine, but if Wine becomes powerful enough to run (almost) any Windows software everyone will gain: more people will adopt Linux because they can use their favorite applications and companies will have a wider audience for their software.

Update: Google Earth for Linux has been released.

Check Out: Google Bought a New Domain

There is a lot of debate lately about the fact that Google registered GoogleCheckout.net / .org /.info. Garett Rogers speculates that this could be related to Google Purchases, the new service that will allow you to make payments with Google. Garett found many domains registered by Google through MARKMONITOR: Googlesubscribed.com, GDrive.com, googletv.com, googlehdtv.net, googledvr.net, gbrowser.com. Now that doesn't mean Google will launch a browser any time soon, or a HTDV service. These are just ideas and speculations. They could as well register any domain that contains "Google".

You can find a partial list of domains registered by Google at Search Engine Watch. The list includes: Googleporn.com, Googlemovie.info, Googlemastercard.com, Googlebuy.com, Googleregistrar.com, Googlesimplex.com. There's a lot to speculate: will Google release branded credit cards, will they teach people the Simplex algorithm?

Google sometimes buys domains to not let others have them and destroy their credibility. So I think we should stop speculating about this.

Related:
Google Wallet
Google Purchases - ready to launch?

The Best Music Player Brings Free Music

amaroK is the best music player you'll ever meet and chances are you haven't met it because amaroK is available only on Linux. Until amaroK is ported to Windows, you can try it on amaroK Live, which is a PCLinuxOS Live CD that includes basic applications, amaroK and free music licensed by Magnatune, a music label that has learned something from the open source software.

So all you have to do is burn the ISO image on a CD (350 MB), restart the computer and boot from the CD. This Live CD works on my laptop so it's likely it will work on any decent computer.

OK, but what's so special about amaroK? It's a music player, right? Yes, but it's a music player that does everything with grace. It shows you recent played tracks, your favourite tracks. For every song, amaroK finds similar tracks, lyrics, tags and information about the artist. It integrates with last.fm, it lets you create scripts in Python (to create an alarm that plays music to wake you up) and it has a dynamic mode that feeds similar music to your playlist automatically.

amaroK supports crossfading, CD burning, iPod, iRiver iFP and USB devices with VFAT and podcasting. Oh, and it looks extremely good.

Related:
Play and convert any multimedia file
If Google made a media player

Google Has a Visual Design Lead

Google hired Douglas Bowman, the man that designed Blogger homepage, many Blogger templates and Google Calendar. He will be Google's Visual Design Lead, a new position created for him. Douglas says he will try to redesign products like Gmail, Writely, Page Creator in order to "establish a common visual language" between Google products.

Douglas Bowman is the founder of Stopdesign, a company that "specializes in a simple, beautiful aesthetic, balance of form and function, and highly flexible design". That seems the right match for Google, that didn't care too much about design until recently.

How To Write A Kitschy Marketing Letter

1. First put a big header.
2. Write short lines with a lot of bold text, and highlighted text.
3. Use lists to split your content.
4. Be redundant, repeat the same 3 ideas many times. This way you'll have more content.
5. Don't forget to write how much money your visitor will get if they buy your products. The sums should be huge.
6. If you promote an AdSense book, include screenshots with your reports. It's easy: save your reports, open the source with Notepad and instead of $5, type $512.
7. Your offer should be exclusive and time limited. Even if you sell videos or PDF files, you should say there's a big demand. So buy now!
8. Put testimonials with enthusiastic text, beautiful photos and random names.
9. You should always say you offer 30 days money back guarantee. Nobody knows what that means, but it must be there. It gives you a feeling of comfort.
10. But wait, that's not all: along with our great products, you'll also get a bunch of useless tutorials, screensavers and another copy of our great book. All for just $99.99, instead of $299.99. So buy now!

As seen on many get-rich-without-doing- anything-than-paying-us sites, like adsense-videos.com.