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Firefox 2.0 Includes Google Toolbar

The new version of Firefox, namely Firefox 2.0 Beta 1, takes most of its new features from Google Toolbar for Firefox. And that's no surprise as the lead Firefox engineer, Ben Goodger, works at Google.

Let's see:

* Google Suggest in the search box. The Firefox implementation doesn't include your bookmarks and the results from the search history, but it's basically the same feature.

* Anti-phishing protection. Although not enabled by default, Firefox uses the same Google Safe Browsing technology from Google Toolbar. Previously that was a standalone extension. "By combining advanced algorithms with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a page that's trying to trick you into disclosing personal information."

* Subscribe to feeds. Like in Google Toolbar, you can subscribe to feeds using Live Bookmarks or a feed reader like Bloglines.

* Spell checking. The differences between Google Toolbar's SpellCheck and Firefox's new feature are that in Firefox every misspelled word is underlined automatically and Firefox uses a local dictionary, while Google queries their server. Google's dictionary is much more comprehensive and it's dynamically updated, but Firefox makes the feature more useful by integrating it in the normal use.

With all these features included in Firefox 2.0 by default, there's little reason to install Google Toolbar. I wonder if this is the final aim of any plug-in / extension: being integrated in the application by default?

Solve a Google Ranking Problem

Here's an interesting SEO problem you can solve at Your SEO Plan. The site offers you multiple-choice questions that guide you step by step in solving the mistery.

"Your friend mentions to you that she’s disappointed with her website’s performance in the search engines. The site isn’t ranking well and she doesn’t know why. It’s a comment you hear a lot, but you’re surprised to hear it from her. Her restaurant, Providence, is one of the hottest places to dine in Los Angeles.

Of course, your friend is a restaurant owner, not a web marketer, but still... with great press and a huge clientele, shouldn't the website be doing well without much of an effort from the restaurant management? You decide to investigate, using your SEO skills."

Also see:
New PageRank update
PageRank overlay tool
SEO for Firefox

New PageRank Update

It's happening again: Google (re)calculates PageRank for the pages in the index. From what I've seen, only new pages get a PageRank, those that already have one don't get an update. At least for the moment. Google will definitely update PR for all the pages, but they've started with the new pages first as they have fewer backlinks.

A great site where you can check the PageRank of a page is Live PR. The site shows you the rank from many Google data centers and it uses Ajax for that.

Although the value of PageRank for webmasters has been decreasing, a PageRank update it's still an exciting event. The last major update was in February.

Google Relieves Headaches

Al Scillitani wrote an open letter to Google and post it on Andy Beal's blog:

Dear Google,

My head hurts. Almost everytime I log into an adwords account something has changed. I knew when I decided to enter the search marketing field over 5 years ago things would continually change. I found search engine optimization and paid search to be to interesting. I knew it would be a challenge to keep up with changes, but this is crazy. [...]

O.K. "Googler's," I will try to keep up with your changes and try to help others use your new features, tools, and formats through articles and step by step guides, but I want some acetaminophen. Please send it to 3200 Atlantic Avenue Ste 100, Raleigh, NC 27604 Attention Al Scillitani.

What did Google do? They sent him acetaminophen.

Google continues to amaze me. Even though they are a huge company, they obviously found my article on Marketing Pilgrim, got some acetaminophen, wrote a letter, and mailed it to me. This may not have taken much of their time, but I am sure it is the small things, like this, that make their employees love working there.

So Google didn't lose its sense of humour and it responded spontaneously. Acetaminophen is a medicine used to relieve pain and it's available without a prescription, being sold under different names like Panadol or Bayer Select Maximum Strength Headache Pain Relief Formula. While they didn't solve the problem of "the many AdWords changes", it's a sign that Google listens to people. At least to some people.

A Collection Of Funny Source Code

Funny things seen in source code and documentation is a page that contains:

Some funny stories

Once I had a junior programmer writing VB code that needed to know the day of the week. He decided to write his own code, and read something like:

if (day = 1) or (day = 8) or (day = 15) or (day = 22) or (day = 29) then
weekday = "Monday"
elseif (day = 2) or (day = 9) or (day = 16) or (day = 23) or (day = 30) then
weekday = "Tuesday"
...

Trying to be educational I asked him for his opinion about his own code, and he said that he would simply modify it every month.

... and some angry comments

// Either the app is exiting or the world is coming to an end.
// Take your pick.

// I'd trade my office mate for a layout manager.

/* PB, is this right? -- AW */

// Everything is shamelessly stolen and rewritten.
// Feel the consequences of GPL ;-)

... and some hilarious errors

% tar cvf foo.tar
tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

In the middle of something innocuous, an angry message box appeared:

Dammit, Darin! I told you not to call me!

// TODO: Don't forget to write something funny and add a warning that some jokes (replace with: a lot of jokes) may be hard to understand for non-programmers.

// This text was posted by an automated script.

JOGL Java Webstart (JNPL)

Turning a JOGL application into a Java webstart application was relatively easy and just involves building a JAR file and creating a JNLP (Java Net Launch Protocol) file. After doing this once I bet you'll probably end up always using webstart to distribute you applications. It is just so easy to work with and installing applications on any browser with Java installed is a snap.

However, I did have a problem when trying to start the application from the browser for the first time. Webstart kept giving me an error message “Java Web Start – Unexpected Error - Unable to launch simpleblending”. When I asked for details, I got the following information (not the most helpful message).

An error occurred while launching/running 
the application.

Title: simpleblending
Vendor: Peter Finch
Category: Unexpected Error

Unexpected exception: java.lang.Exception

I tracked it down to the location I was getting the JOGL extension from. I originally used the prescribed location of https://jogl.dev.java.net/webstart/jogl-1-1.jnlp, however, when I changed this to http://download.java.net/media/jogl/builds/archive/jsr-231-webstart-current/jogl.jnlp the problem disappeared and the application started. Perhaps this is a library version problem or something. I understand it is possible to have your own copies of the libraries, which is probably a good idea so that you always know what version or JOGL your application running against. I'll work that out later...

Below is the JNPL file I used and here is a link to the webstart application. Just create a JAR file as you normally would. I like to use Ant scripts to automate the building and deployment for this sort of thing, as it is really easy and built into Eclipse. Note that the first time you load this it will go off and download the JOGL jar and native libraries for your platform. This could take a while (it's about 1.5MB's of data), but the great thing is that once it is downloaded, if any of you other applications use the same location they will reuse the already downloaded version and start up a lot quicking. JNPL even handles version changes (it's so cool!)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<jnlp spec="1.0+" codebase="http://www.homepla.net/webstart/simpleblending" href="simpleblending.jnlp">
  <information>
    <title>Simple Blending</title>
    <vendor>Peter Finch</vendor>
    <homepage href="http://www.homepla.net/webstart/simpleblending/" />
    <description>JOGL Webstart Example 1</description>
    <offline-allowed/>
  </information>
  <resources>
    <j2se version="1.4+" />
    <jar href="jplanet.jar" />
    <property name="sun.java2d.noddraw" value="true"/>
    <extension name="jogl" href="http://download.java.net/media/jogl/builds/archive/jsr-231-webstart-current/jogl.jnlp" />
  </resources>
  <application-desc main-class="jplanet.JPlanetWindow" />
</jnlp>

So This Is Goodbye

[ The content of this post has been removed. ]

The Profile of a Search Engine User

Firefox 2 includes in its search box Google Suggest and Yahoo LiveSearch. So when you type the first letters of a word, you'll get suggestions from popular searches. It's interesting to compare the userbase of the two search engines by looking at users' queries.

Python is an animal, but also a programming language.

Google users seem to search for specific models of mobile phones, while Yahoo users want general information.

Google users know a simple trick: to find information about a film, type [imdb title-of-the-film]. Yahoo users search for general information.

While those who search for Firefox on Yahoo seem to be interested in finding more information or downloading the browser, Google users try to tweak the browser. As they already have it.

Everybody wants to download music and instant messengers, but Google users are more sophisticated and also like Java, download accelerators and Download Festival, a three day rock/metal/punk festival held annually in England.

Conclusions? Google users are more tech-savvy, more informed and search for specific details. Yahoo users are more interested in media, are more prone to security problems (they search for "free ipod"), and don't know how to find information quickly, so they are usually more distracted.

Also see:
10 powerful uses for Google Suggest
Google users are wealthier

Google Audio Ads - One Step Closer

TechToolBlog reports that Google started to send surveys about the new AdSense Audio initiative. Google AdSense Audio would enable people with a $200 budget to break into radio advertising, making targeted and area advertising via radio, IPTV and podcast more effective and viable for smaller businesses.

Google intends to put advertisers in touch with production agencies that create radio ads. That would be something new for Google, since the text ads didn't require a professional company to write the copy.

This technology tries to "simplify the sales process, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio advertising". It also provides targeted advertising and easier to implement local ads.

Related:
AdSense Audio: Advertising For Radios
GPS Google ads on radio

Apple and Google Have the Most Loyal Users

MacNN reports that three studies conducted last year confirm that Apple, Google and Symantec are the high-tech companies with the most loyal customers.

"Apple, whose score far outranks its closest competitor, is well known for its passionate and dedicated customer base. Google's high Net Promoter Score establishes it as a clear leader in the emerging market of online services, with corresponding strong performance in share price," says Dr. Laura Brooks, vicepresident of Satmetrix Systems, the institute that conducted the studies.

Apple and Google are similar in many ways: simplicity, innovation, listening to their users. An interesting comment about Mac users:

"When we buy a Mac it is not just buying a computer. It's like contributing to a cause that we back up and support. To integrate computers around our lives and not the other way around. [...] Mac users even recognize each other miles away. Apple has a culture, a language, and a fashion."

Windows Live Messenger And Yahoo Messenger Are Interoperable

Microsoft and Yahoo have started testing the interoperability between their IM clients: Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger 8. That means you can add MSN contacts to Yahoo Messenger and the reverse, send messages, view personal status messages, share emoticons, view offline messages.

You can join the beta by going to http://messenger.yahoo.com for Yahoo Messenger and here for Windows Live Messenger (use Internet Explorer).

There are other instant messengers that allow you to login on multiple IM networks simultaneously (for example, Gaim as a desktop client and Meebo from your browser), but this is the first real step in the interoperability of IM networks. The resulting IM network will have 350 million accounts. The next step will be the interoperability between Google Talk and AIM.

Related:
Windows Live Messenger review
Yahoo Messenger 8 review
Remove ads from Yahoo Messenger

JOGL Draw Arrays

Calling the OpenGL drawing primitives in Java, like glVertex() and glNormal(), quickly becomes a bottleneck for rendering scenes. The function call overhead, although small, when multiplied a million times for each polygon is a problem very quickly, however, this can be overcome using glDrawArrays (commonly known as vertex arrays). Vertices, normals, colours and texture coordinates can be loaded into an IntBuffer, FloatBuffer or a DoubleBuffer (depending on what you want to use) and then sent to the rendering engine using a single glDrawArrays() function call.


import java.nio.DoubleBuffer ;
..
DoubleBuffer verticesBuffer = BufferUtil.newDoubleBuffer(3 * 3) ;
..
verticesBuffer.put(c0.x) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c0.y) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c0.z) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c1.x) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c1.y) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c1.z) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c2.x) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c2.y) ;
verticesBuffer.put(c2.z) ;
..
gl.glEnableClientState (GL.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);        
verticesBuffer.rewind();
gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL.GL_DOUBLE, 0, verticesBuffer);        
gl.glDrawArrays(GL.GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3);

Sadly, there is still a function call overhead loading the values into the DoubleBuffer, however, this is less that the overhead of calling glVertex() multiple times. Make sure you rewind the location in the buffer using verticesBuffer.rewind() or verticesBuffer.position(0) before calling glVertexPointer() otherwise you will load the current location in the buffer into OpenGL instead of the starting location and you’ll end up only seeing a new vertices each call.

I found that loading the values into a local array and the calling the put(double[], int, int) function to load multiple values at once was much slower that calling multiple put(double) functions, even if the array was pre-allocated and reused. I could not find any way to load values into the buffers without doing it thought a function call… so if you know how to do please let me know.


// Really slow for some reason.
double array[] = new double[9] ;
array[0] = c0.x ;
array[1] = c0.y ;
..
verticesBuffer.put(array, 0, 9) ;

Rendering tip… remember to set gl.glEnable(GL.GL_NORMALIZE) when using matrixes to translating and scaling groups of vertices, otherwise the vertices normals passed to OpenGL get transformed as well, but they don’t get re-normalized, so you end up of unexpected lighting results.

Here is some good example code but make sure you add that rewind calling glColorPointer().

Google - Behind The Screen

A wonderful documentary (47 mins) created by Ijsbrand van Veelen features some interesting discussions with Marissa Mayer, Vint Cerf, Ian Brown (Open Rights Group), Brewster Kahle (founder of Internet Archive) and some Google engineers. They talk about PageRank, targeted advertising, life at Google, user privacy, machine translation, the story of "Don't be evil", book search, the danger of Google's monopoly, Google Earth. The video is really well-made, it tries to be objective by showing different opinions on the same subject, even though it's more inclined towards conspiracy theories.

Marissa Mayer says Google collects information about users' activity to improve the quality of search results, not to create a profile for each user. They need to store it for an indefinite period of time as there are services that require a huge quantity of data to process, like the spell checking feature on Google Search.

The documentary puts tough questions like: "How can you convince people that Google isn't a Big Brother company?", "Can we see how do you scan the books?", "Should the digitization of books be made by a company like Google who may require fees to query the database for a research project?", "What happens if a search engine becomes dominant?".

The conclusion of the documentary? Google shouldn't be let to become a monopoly, they shouldn't be the only source of information, they shouldn't become the Ministry of Truth. Although Google's neutrality and unbiased results are a proof that it deserves our trust, it's always the best to diversify the sources of information.

And here's the full video:

Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Available

The first beta of Firefox 2.0, codenamed Bon Echo, is now available. The most interesting features of the new version are: inline spell checking - Firefox underlines the errors and suggests alternatives, the new search bar integrates Google Suggest (and also a similar feature for Yahoo) and lets you manage search engines much easier, session restore - if the browser crashes, it will open the previous tabs when you restart.

Firefox 2.0 gathers extensions and themes under one name: add-ons, so it's easier to manage and update them. The new version includes an anti-phishing feature previously available in Google Toolbar, although by default Firefox uses a local list of malicious sites and doesn't connect to Google.

Now it's easier to subscribe to feeds by clicking on the orange icon from the address bar. You also have the option to subscribe using a different feed reader (the options are: a desktop feed reader like Outlook, IGoogle, MyYahoo and Bloglines). If you use another online feed reader, open a new tab, type about:config and enter "browser.content" in the Filter box. Now you can replace Bloglines with your feed reader: double-click on the title and on the URL and enter the new values. For NewsGator, you should enter: http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=%s .

If you close some tabs by mistake, you can go to History / Recently Closed Tabs and choose the tab you want to reopen. Another option is to right-click on a tab and select "Undo Close Tab".

To test Firefox 2.0 Beta 1:

* you don't have to uninstall your current version of Firefox. The application installs itself in a different directory and you won't lose the stable version.

* most extensions will be incompatible with the new build, so you have to add Nightly Tools Extension after installing Firefox 2.0 Beta 1. Restart the browser, go to Tools / Add-ons and click on "Make all extensions compatible". Restart again. (Too many restarts, but that's how Firefox works.)

Here are the direct links for download:
Windows (5.4MB) | Mac (17MB) | Linux (8.9MB) | Non-English

Common Errors In English

Paul Brians, a professor of English, has compiled an extensive list of common errors in English usage. Although some may think he is too picky when he makes distinction between classic and classical or imply and infer, it's worth reading his explanations and even printing the list (if you want to print it, check this text file). There is also a book version of the site.

Some tech errors:

* A hard drive and a hard disk are much the same thing; but when it comes to removable computer media, the drive is the machinery that turns and reads the disk. Be sure not to ask for a drive when all you need is a disk.

* On the World Wide Web, a "home page" is normally the first page a person entering a site encounters, often functioning as a sort of table of contents for the other pages. People sometimes create special pages within their sites introducing a particular topic, and these are also informally called "home pages" (as in "The Emily Dickinson Home Page"); but it is a sure sign of a Web novice to refer to all Web pages as home pages. Spelling "homepage" as a single word is common on the Web, but distinctly more casual than "home page."

* In electronics, a jack is a female part into which one inserts a plug, the male part. People get confused because "Jack" is a male name. The cyberpunk term (from William Gibson's Neuromancer) "jack in" should logically be "plug in," but we're stuck with this form in the science fiction realm.

Google Maps Humiliates Valletta

The Register discovered that Google Maps doesn't know the location of Valletta, the capital of Malta. Google shows the location of the historic fortress city, in the Mediterranean Sea. Google Earth doesn't know the exact location either. Maybe Google Maps should have a collaborative tool to let the users report errors on the map.

On a brighter note, Google Maps improves zoom.

* Explanation for the title: the official name the Order of Saint John gave to the city was Humilissima Civitas Valletta - a city bound to humility. (from Wikipedia)

New Google Patents On Ads And Local Search

Search Engine Watch found 12 Google patent applications published last week, mostly related to advertising, local search and automatic information extraction. Here are some of the most interesting patents:

Associating features with web pages automatically is a way to target ads to a specified page based on the most relevant keywords / concepts on a page. If a page is categorized into the science domain and very few people click on the page when it appears in search results for queries related to science, or spend only a couple of seconds on that page, it means the topic wasn't wisely chosen.

"The present invention permits features, such as keywords or topics, to be associated with entities, such as Web pages or categories. [..] Such associations may be used for a variety or reasons, such as, for example, targeting ads, suggesting targeting features for an advertisement for presentation to advertisers, automatically generating targeting criteria for an advertisement, etc.

The feature score may be a function of a user action with respect to the document. For example, if the user selected the document when it was rendered on a search results page to a query, features from the query would be scored higher than if the document were not selected. As another example, if the user competed a transaction at a document when it was rendered on a search results page to a query, features from the query would be scored higher than if the no conversion took place on the document."

Personalized transportation route - a system that uses a GPS device to locate your car and transportation flow data to deliver information about the best route you should follow to go to a certain address.

"The method comprises gathering a plurality of past location indicators over time for a wireless client device, determining a future travel objective using the plurality of previously-gathered location indicators, obtaining transportation flow data for an area proximate to the determined driving objective, and generating a suggested route for the travel objective using the transportation flow data. Information for the suggested route may also be transmitted to the wireless device, and may be transmitted at a predetermined time of day."

Determining local relevance of a document when there's no information about addresses or other local references is a difficult task. The patent describes some signals used to replace this information, like anchor texts in pages that link to the site, partial addresses or the frequency of occurrence of words for an area. Another important task is to determine the authoritativeness of a document for a specified location. "For example, a document corresponding to the home page of a restaurant at the location may be considered more authoritative for the location than a document corresponding to a review of the restaurant."

Google Video's Dreams Of Expansion

Noticing the growth of YouTube, Google Video started an expansion plan meant to increase its audience. And what can increase the site's traffic better than viral videos posted in blogs or spread by email?

So now in Google Video you can see a huge button that reads "Email - Blog - Post to MySpace". After all, "MySpace accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail" as FOX News reports.

Now that the US market problem has been partially solved, Google can have a competitive advantage if it localizes Google Video. So they built versions in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Polish. Of course, most videos have descriptions in English, but some people will feel a little more comfortable seeing some content particularly targeted to their country.

Folksonomy fans now have labels, even though not always (see the screenshot). Unlike YouTube, users can download better quality videos and don't have restrictions regarding video's length or size. Google Video has partnerships with big content producers and delivers some premium videos for free.

So the future sounds better for Google Video.

Google Maps Improves Zoom

Google Maps added two more ways to perform zoom, in addition to the plus / minus keys and the slider:

* left double-click to zoom-in one level, right double-click to zoom out
* zoom using your mouse wheel

Another new feature is a smoother transition when you zoom. Google uses some animation to emulate Google Earth's continuous zoom. This requires a broadband connection, or else you won't notice the difference. The feature is also available only on Windows if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer.

I wonder how close is the moment when Google Earth moves online.

Related:
Google Maps + Photos = Panoramia
View geographic data on Google Maps
Change the world with Google Earth 4

Gliffy - Diagrams Made Easy

Gliffy is a web application that allows you to create diagrams and layouts online, share them with your coworkers and publish them on the web. Gliffy was developed in Flash and is more responsive than Ajax applications like Google Spreadsheets. So what can you create with Gliffy?

* Flow charts
* Workflow documents
* Class Diagrams
* Network Diagrams (like in this diagram)
* Database schemas
* Website layouts/wireframes
* Room plans

You can export the diagrams in SVG, JPEG and PNG formats, so it's easy to publish them on a web page or to import them in a more powerful tool like Microsoft Visio. Gliffy keeps track of all the revisions of a diagram, so it's easy to revert to earlier versions.

You won't find too many templates like in Microsoft Visio, you can't incorporate too much data in the diagrams, there aren't UML diagrams, but Gliffy is a useful tool for those who don't need all these features. Besides, unlike Microsoft Visio, Gliffy is free and seems a perfect fit for Google Office package.

Phishing Attack On Gmail

Virus experts from Sophos have reported a strange email sent to Gmail users that claims they have won $500 from Google. The email is a part of a phishing attack that intends to obtain details about users' bank account. When people click on the link included in the email, they are sent to a page that says there has been a problem with the payment and asks a membership fee of $8.60.

Here is the email:

You won $500! Gmail congratulates you!
CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU WON $500!
Gmail gives members random cash prizes. Today, your account is randomly selected as the one of 12 top winners accounts who will get cash prizes from us. Please click the link below and follow instructions on our web site. Your money will be paid directly to your e-gold, PayPal, StormPay or MoneyBookers account.

If you get an email similar to this one, click on "More options" and then on "Report phishing". Google didn't organize such a contest and phishers rely on people's ignorance and greed.

Related stories:
Gmail account deleted
Yahoo Mail Beta vs Gmail

New in Gmail: Select All Messages

When you select all the messages from the inbox or from another view (search, all mail, sent mail), Gmail gives you the option to select all the messages from that view, not only the first 50 or 100 that are displayed. If you want to delete all the emails that contain "Peter", you can search for "Peter", select all and click on the link "Select all conversations that match this search". This is extremely useful, especially if you have many emails. Until now you had to select the messages from each page and repeat the same action, which was time consuming.

Unlike desktop applications or Yahoo Mail Beta, Gmail doesn't show all the emails from a view. Its design is similar to Google Search: you can view at most 100 messages at a time. This is a big issue when you try to apply a new label to all the messages that match a criteria, or when you try to archive all the inbox emails from a person.

Like the other new features, the new link will be available to everybody in the days to come. An improvement to this feature might be to let the users select read / unread messages from all the pages of a view.

Other new features in Gmail:
Delete all spam
Apply filters to old emails

10 Effortless Ways For Google To Get Attention

What can Google do to make everyone talk about Google? It can launch a product, have a press release, hire someone famous, or do something much simpler, that will guarantee one or two days of blog discussions, Digg comments and Slashdot declamatory opinions:

1. Create a new entry in robots.txt. Garrett Rogers will notice that.

2. Post a blog entry and remove it in a couple of minutes. Some Bloglines users will notice it and spread the word.

3. Buy a new domain, something like googletravel.com. I can see the blog titles: "Google Travel - Sky is the Limit".

4. Add a comment in Google Video's code about global warming. There's always someone checking the latest version of the code.

5. Change the arrows from the navigation of Google search.

6. Push a new design for a small number of users.

7. Put a strange link at the bottom of Google News. The link will go to a secret Google project.

8. Let Google's Eric Case create a new blog on BlogSpot: googlemusic.blogspot.com and link it from his profile.

9. Change the font of the top message from Google Cache.

10. Remove the beta label from a product like Google Toolbar 4.

On Limits

Imagine a world without limits: no bandwidth limits, no speed limits, no time limits, no copyright limits. You can finish your projects when do you like, use any artwork that supports your ideas, drive your car without speed restrictions. Drive using the speed of your imagination. No physical restrictions, nothing that limits your actions.

Do you think you'll be a better man, you'll create more? If you have access to all the books ever written, will you use it? Will it make you feel more powerful? Or this will diminish your desire to explore, as everything is already there. Knowledge will put pressure on you and you'll stop wanting to improve. Because everything has already been said, everything has already been discovered.

While trying to overcome restrictions, your brain is more active. Salvador Dali was forcing himself to paint in painful situations (such as wearing very tight shoes), to create better pieces of art.

If you can do anything, you'll most likely do nothing.

Box.net - 1GB Of Free Online Storage

Box.net is a service that allows you to have 1GB of free online storage without ads. You can have 5GB for $5 a month or 15GB for $10 month. The only limitations of the free account are:
* ~~no public sharing. You can share files only with other Box.net users.~~ You don't get a public direct link to your files, only a placeholder page.
* 10MB file size limit.
* no phone support.

Box.net has a simple interface, works from most browsers, lets you upload multiple files at once and synchronizes your files. You can use a SSL connection to secure your transfers. Files can have tags and can be searched by name.

You can use the online storage from Box.net or from Goowy, a "web operating system" that features a mail client, IM, RSS reader and a slick calendar. Netvibes and other personalized homepages also let you access your files. Box.net has even a Firefox extension.

Related:
GDrive homepage accidentally public

GDrive Is On The Way

Corsin Camichel discovered something strange: the page http://writely.com/index.html (not available anymore, but you can see the screenshot and a mirror), showed an introduction to GDrive, code-named Platypus, a Google service that allows you to store files online. The links sent you to pages from Google's intranet, but the page listed the features of the product, which are quite impressive:

* Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall Platypus. Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
* Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different operating systems.
* VPN-less access. Not at a Google computer? View your files on the web at http://troutboard.com/p.
* Collaborate. Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can write.
* Disconnected access. On the plane? VPN broken? All your files are still accessible.
* Publish. All of the files you store on Platypus are automatically accessible from the (corporate) web.
* Share. Other Googlers can mount your Platypus folders and open your files in read-only mode.
* Local IO speeds. Open and save as quickly as you could if you were accessing them from your C: drive.

The text marked with italic is commented in the source code. Most likely, GDrive is only available to Google employees, at least for now.

GDrive also has a desktop client for Windows, Mac and Linux that works a file manager. GDrive wants to be a free alternative to a network-attached storage. Your files will be accessible via an Internet connection, rather than being only on your computer.

It's very difficult to understand how this page got on Writely's site, but it was an accident. Hopefully, Google will manage launch the rumored GDrive, the online storage system with unlimited space. This will be one of the biggest projects ever made by Google and will require a great deal of computing resources.

Google talked about GDrive in March at Google's Analyst Day. Here's a quote from the leaked presentation:

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).

We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user.

As we move toward the "Store 100%" reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.

Krugle - Search Open Source Code

Krugle is a search engine for code. You can find code in C++, Java, Perl, Python, SQL, Ruby, XML and more, view it syntax highlighted, locate the library in the structure of the program, save it and share it with others. Krugle is useful for those who learn a programming language and need some help with basic functions or instructions, but it's also a good resource for advanced programmers that can find information on APIs, libraries, sample code and documentation.

The interface uses tabs, so you can have more than one open file. The license of the code and its origin is clearly labeled.

My only complaint is the relevancy of the search which is not very good: I had a hard time finding some C code for binary search using Krugle. Also the name is too similar to Google.

Not Every End Is The Goal

"Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal." (Nietzsche)

{ Photos: AFP. }

Google OneBox Results

On top of the organic results (and sometimes at the bottom), Google shows OneBox results for queries that can be answered instantly or when a direct link can be offered.

There are several kinds of OneBox results:

1. Music search. Enter the name of an artist or band, and you'll get information, albums and reviews.

2. Movie search. Google aggregates movie reviews and, if you live in the US, Google also offers movie showtimes for the theaters near you.

3. News search. If there is a news related to your query, you'll find it on top of the results.

4. Stock quotes. If you enter a ticker symbol, you'll get live quotes and information from Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and other sites.

5. Weather. Type "weather new york" to see a four-day forecast for New York. This feature is also available outside of the US, but not worldwide.

6. Travel. Type "jfk airport" to find the conditions at the JFK airport in New York. You can also check the status of a flight (n199ua) or buy plane tickets (Madrid to Oslo).

7. Maps. Enter an address and you'll see a link to Google Maps.

8. Local businesses. You can search for something like "pizza in NY" to get information about local businesses.

9. Images. Type "images" or "pics" at the end of a query, and three images will be displayed at the top of the results. Example: "Hawaii images". There are also queries that trigger OneBox results, without including these words, like "autumn", because they are popular queries at Google Image Search.

10. Shopping. If you type a product (like "microwave"), the first three results from Froogle are displayed (sometimes Google displays less than three results). You can trigger this OneBox by adding "price", "froogle" to your query.

11. Other verticals via Google Base: cars, jobs, dating. If you type "jobs in California", Google will offer you a list of positions and then further restrictions regarding the distance from the job, job type, industry and a map that shows the location of each job.

12. Google Books and Google Scholar. To get these OneBox results, you need to match the title of a book available at Google Books or of a scholar paper. You can also trigger them by adding "books" or "papers" at the end of a query.

13. News Archive. This OneBox is displayed at the bottom of the search results and contains results from Google News Archive. You can trigger this OneBox by entering historical events like "moon landing" or by adding a year at the end of the query.

14. Google Groups. You'll see this OneBox if you enter technical queries, like an error in Microsoft Office 2007 or a bug from a C++ compiler.

15. Blog Search. Discover recent blog posts that match your query. It might help to add "blog" to your query to trigger this OneBox that shows up at the bottom of the page.

16. Search history. This rare OneBox shows you web pages relevant to your search, that you've already visited using Google search. To see this OneBox you need to be logged in and to use Google Personalized Search.