Google Cloud Print

Google found an interesting solution for printing documents in Chrome OS. Instead of preloading the drivers for the most popular printers, Chrome OS will use an online service for printing: Google Cloud Print.

In Google Chrome OS, all applications are web apps. Therefore, in designing the printing experience for Google Chrome OS, we want to make sure printing from web apps is as natural as printing from traditional native apps is today. Additionally, with the proliferation of web-connected mobile devices such as those running Google Chrome OS and other mobile operating systems, we don't believe it is feasible to build and maintain complex print subsystems and print drivers for each platform. In fact, even the print subsystems and drivers on existing PC operating systems leave a lot of room for improvement.

Our goal is to build a printing experience that enables any app (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer anywhere in the world. This goal is accomplished through the use of a cloud print service. Apps no longer rely on the local operating system (and drivers) to print. Instead, apps (whether they be a native desktop/mobile app or a web app) use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs. Google Cloud Print is then responsible for sending the print job to the appropriate printer, with the particular options the user selected, and providing job status to the app.

The only problem is that no printer supports Google Cloud Print and that's why Google revealed some details about the service's interfaces, hoping that printer manufacturers will update their software and support it. If a printer doesn't support Google's service, you'll need a proxy software for the computer where the printer is installed. Google says that the proxy software will be bundled with Google Chrome.

Google wants to associate your printers with a Google account and manage them the same way as you manage Google Docs documents, so you can share them with other people. Web applications can use APIs to customize the printing options and change the user interface displayed when you start printing a document.

"We believe cloud printing has tremendous benefits for end users and for the industry and is essential, given the rapid shift toward cloud-based applications and data storage. We also believe that the only way that the benefits of cloud printing can be realized is if the protocols are open, freely implementable, and, when possible, based on existing industry standards. We expect there to be multiple cloud print services, and users should have a choice in which services they use and which printers they can connect to a service. Stay tuned for more details. We are confident that cloud-aware printers will soon be a reality," suggests Google.

It may seem that Google's solution is complicated and difficult to implement: we need an open standard for cloud printing, cloud-aware printers and users need to associate printers with an online service. Instead of sending the printing job directly to the printer, you'll send it to the online service, which forwards it to the printer. Despite all these hurdles, Google Cloud Print allows you to print documents from a mobile phone, tablet, notebook or any other mobile device. You'll be able to print files from an Android phone or tablet, from a Chrome OS computer, from any computer that runs Google Chrome and from other devices that will support Google Cloud Print.

Drag and Drop Gmail Attachments

Gmail added support for a HTML5 feature that has been recently included in Firefox and Google Chrome: selecting files using drag and drop. If you use Firefox 3.6+ or Chrome 4+, you can now add attachments by dragging the files from your favorite file manager to Gmail. When you drag the files, Gmail shows a drop zone where you need to place the files.


"We'll enable this for other browsers as soon as they support this feature. For now, you can drag and drop attachments in Chrome and Firefox only," mentions Google.

The nice thing about this feature is that it no longer uses the Flash uploader, which isn't very reliable. What I don't understand is why Gmail still uses the Flash uploader to select multiple files directly from the browser, now that the input tag supports more than one file. If you disable Flash in Firefox 3.6 and don't use drag and drop, you can only attach one file at a time:


{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Mencari Bilangan Prima dalam C++

"Om Swastiastu"

Kalian tentunya sudah mengetahui apa itu bilangan prima. Bilangan prima adalah bilangan yang habis dibagi satu dan bilangan itu sendiri. Misalnya: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, dan lain sebagainya. Nah, kali ini saya ingin memberikan syntax mengenai bagaimana cara mencari bilangan prima dalam C++. Dengan ilustrasi kita sendiri yang menginputkan 2 bilangan, kemudian mencari bilangan prima antara kedua bilangan tersebut dan menghitung terdapat berapa bilangan prima antara kedua bilangan tersebut.

Nah, lihat syntax berikut ini.

#include <iostream.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>
void main()
{

int a, b, c, d, e;
Continue Reading »

Gmail's New Interface for Adding Event Invitations

Gmail is even more integrated with Google Calendar: when you compose a new message, you'll find a new interface for sending invitations. Click "Insert invitation" and Gmail opens a new dialog that lets you find the best time for your even by showing the events from your calendar and from the calendars of people you are inviting. You can also type the location of the event, a description and choose a calendar for the event.


After entering all the details, the event is added to the email message and you can still edit the event or remove it.


{ Thanks, Abhijeet. }

Counting Crows - Accidentally in Love

"Om Swastiastu"

Hi all, this is the OST The Shrek. I like this song very much and I think I should post this and share it with you guys. As usually, I give you the download link at the end of this post. Enjoy it! :

Band : Counting Crows
Title : Accidentally in Love

----------------------------------------------------------------
So she said, "What's the problem baby?"
What's the problem I don't know
Well maybe I'm in love, think about it every time
I think about it, can't stop thinking 'bout it

How much longer will it take to cure this
Just to cure it 'cause I can't ignore it if it's love
Makes me wanna turn around and face me
But I don't know nothing about love
Continue Reading »

Google Chat Enhances Links to Google Maps

When you type a link to Google Maps search results in Gmail Chat, iGoogle Chat or orkut's chat box, Google replaces the long URL with the Google Maps query. Google Maps URLs are usually very long because they include a lot of parameters, but Google should do a better job at removing extraneous parameters.



"On the Gmail version of Google Talk, Google now shortens the links and makes them readable. For example, it changes the link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=HEB+near+college+station,+tx&sll=30.606817,-96.309929&sspn=0.050086,0.090895&ie=UTF8&hq=HEB&hnear=College+Station,+TX&ll=30.6128,-96.318512&spn=0.050083,0.090895&z=14 to a link where the text is HEB near College Station, TX," noticed Korben, a reader of this blog.

{ Thanks, Korben. }

Twitter Timeline in Google Real-Time Search

Google's real-time search results have been enhanced with a timeline restricted to Twitter messages.

"The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now there's a new chart at the top. The chart shows the relative volume of activity on Twitter about the topic," explains Google.

For now, Google's timelines show Twitter messages posted since February 11, but Google promises that they will be extended to the entire Twitter archive. After all, Google paid Twitter to have access to the data.

Here are some examples of searches that show the timeline: [Toyota], [Android], [Shakespeare], [Happy new year].


In other Twitter-related news, Google Labs launched Follow Finder, a new service that recommends a list of Twitter users to follow. Google analyzed Twitter's social graph and it's able to recommend other Twitter users that are followed by people who follow the users you do.

Eric Schmidt on Chrome OS

At Google Atmosphere, a CIO event about cloud computing, Eric Schmidt explained why Chrome OS is meaningful:

"The promise of Chrome and Chrome OS is that the devices that you give to your employees will have a 2-second boot time, will be completely disposable and the price will be incredibly low."

Chrome OS computers will no longer be personal because it doesn't matter which computer you use. After logging to your Google account, Chrome OS will retrieve your bookmarks, themes, settings, web history from Google's servers. Your data is stored in a central location and you can access it from all your devices.

Computers will boot almost instantly, so you no longer have to wait. They'll be cheap, easy to replace and to maintain.

You can already use Chrome on your computer, but a Chrome OS computer is optimized for running a browser, doesn't have extraneous software and it's inherently more secure.

Membuat Program Penjumlahan di VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Akhirnya saya bisa memberikan artikel pemrograman visual basic 2008 pertama saya. Kita belajar dari yang paling dasar dulu ya teman-teman. Kali ini saya ingin memberikan materi mengenai cara membuat program penjumlahan dalam vb 2008. Nah, setelah kalian berada dihalaman kerja vb 2008, maka yang harus kalian lakukan adalah membuat form seperti dibawah ini.

Maaf kalau desain formnya kurang bagus. Tapi kita coba dulu lah seperti ini. Nah, untuk membuat form seperti ini, caranya drag label yang terdapat pada toolbox kedalam form lalu pada properties box cari tulisan Text, kemudian ganti text label1 dengan A:. Selanjutnya drag Textbox menuju form dan letakkan disamping tulisan A: atau disamping label1. Ikuti langkah diatas untuk membuat B. Kemudian drag Button dan letakkan dibawah textbox2. Pada properties box, ganti Text pada button1 dengan "hitung". Nah, sekarang kalian telah mengetahui bagaimana cara membuat desain program. Selanjutnya, tugas kalian adalah membuat desain form seperti gambar diatas. Anda dapat mendesain program sesuka hati kalian, asalkan rapi dan enak dipandang mata.
Continue Reading »

Memulai Visual Basic 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Setelah Anda mendownload dan menginstall Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition, bukalah shortcut Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. Caranya, klik menu Start, All Programs, Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. Nah, setelah itu, maka akan muncul window tampilan awal visual basic 2008 express edition seperti yang terlihat pada gambar dibawah.

Nah, untuk memulai membuat program menggunakan visual basic 2008 express edition ini, caranya, klik menu File, New Project. Untuk cara lebih cepatnya, kalian dapat menekan tombol Ctrl + N. Setelah itu maka akan muncul jendela atau window seperti gambar dibawah ini.

Pilih Windows Form Application dan beri nama file dibawahnya, jika kalian membuat program perhitungan misalnya, maka beri nama perhitungan, kemudian klik OK. Selanjutnya, jika sudah meng-klik tombol OK, maka akan muncul layar baru lagi seperti gambar dibawah ini.
Continue Reading »

Google Will Open Source On2 VP8 Codec

NewTeeVee reports that Google will soon open source VP8, the latest video codec released by On2, a company acquired by Google for $133 million.

On2 is the company that open-sourced VP3, which has been further developed and it's now known as Theora. "In June 2002 On2 donated VP3 to the Xiph.Org Foundation under a BSD-like open source license. On2 also made an irrevocable, royalty-free license grant for any patent claims it might have over the software and any derivatives, allowing anyone to use any VP3-derived codec for any purpose. In August 2002, On2 entered into an agreement with the Xiph.Org Foundation to make VP3 the basis of a new, free video codec, called Theora."

Now that browsers have native support for playing videos, many wondered what is the best video format for the web. Firefox, Opera support Theora videos, Safari plays H.264 videos, while Google Chrome supports both formats.

"Although the h264 codec has gained dominance due to its excellent compression and broad support in the consumer electronics ecosystem, it is covered by patents that preclude broad royalty-free usage. (...) Ogg [Theora] may offer advantages from a licensing standpoint, but there are still many unanswered questions about its quality and suitability for Internet video streaming services," explains Ars Technica.

Open-sourcing VP8 could solve the problem, although it could take years until Google releases the code and browsers start to support the new format. Despite all the hurdles, it's rare to see a company that pays more than $100 million to open source a video codec.

"Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform," said Google's Sundar Pichai, when Google announced the On2 acquisition.

Here's what the Free Software Foundation wrote in an open letter to Google:

"With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec -- VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash)."



{ Image licensed as Creative Commons by yummiec00kies. }

How to Try the New Google Docs Apps

Here's how to try Google Drawings and the new interfaces of Google Documents and Google Spreadsheets:

* create a new drawing by opening the documents list, clicking on "Create new" and selecting "Drawing".


* to see the new document editor, go to the settings page, click on the "Editing" tab and select "Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor." Unfortunately, you can't see the existing documents in the new interface. The new document editor is code-named "kix" and it's a completely new application.


* to switch to the new spreadsheets editor, open a spreadsheet and click on "New version" at the top of the page. All spreadsheets will now open in the new interface.


The new interface is not yet available for presentations.

Tutorial Pemrograman VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Hi young programmers, mulai lusa saya akan memulai memberikan tutorial bahasa pemrograman visual basic 2008. Kabar bagus bukan? buat yang menyukai bahasa pemrograman yang satu ini. Karena banyak yang request agar Saya segera memberikan artikel tentang bahasa pemrograman ini. Nah, hari ini saya hanya akan memberikan pengumumannya saja. Mungkin juga nanti sore saya akan start memberikan satu posting program sederhana VB 2008.

Untuk belajar bahasa pemrograman VB 2008, kalian membutuhkan Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express yang dapat kalian download disini. Nah, bagi yang bingung, bagaimana cara menginstall VB 2008, lihat caranya disini. Setelah itu, saya harap kalian bisa menguasai dasar-dasar dari visual basic 2008. Saya sendiri masih mempelajari bahasa pemrograman ini secara otodidak dan hanya belajar dari buku. Karena di bangku kuliah, saya tidak mendapatkan bahasa pemrograman visual basuc.

"Om Santhi, Santhi, Santhi, Om"

Google Buys Plink to Improve Visual Mobile Search

Google acquired Plink, a small startup that developed Plink Art, an Android application that lets you identify paintings using your mobile phone's camera. Plink Art was one of the winners of the Android Developer Challenge 2. You can find the application in Android's market: just search for [Plink Art].

"The coolest feature of Plink Art is instant art identification. Just snap a photo and if the painting is in our database our visual search system will recognize it and tell you all about it. Currently Plink knows about tens of thousands of famous paintings," explains Plink's website.

I tried the application on my Nexus One by taking photos of Google Image Search results, but the results were terrible. Google Goggles found much better results for the same images.


The two Plink co-founders and only employees will work to improve Google Goggles, a visual search tool that already lets you find books, places and artwork. From Plink's blog:

"We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we're delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today. Google has already shown that it's serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up. The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go. We're looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it's going to be a lot of fun!"


{ via LA Times Blog}

Major Update for Google Docs

Google Docs has been constantly updated since 2006, Writely and Google Spreadsheets have merged, but adding new features became increasingly difficult. Now that browsers are much better than they were four years ago and cutting-edge apps like Google Wave can run in a browser, it was time for a new beginning.

"We decided to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of Docs to give us greater flexibility, improved performance and a better platform for developing new features quickly. Today, we're pleased to announce preview versions of the new Google document and spreadsheet editors and a new standalone drawings editor, all built with an even greater focus on speed and collaboration," says Jonathan Rochelle.

The new versions of the Google Docs will be rolled out in the coming days and you'll be able to try them when you see a message at the top of the page: "New version".

Besides using a new infrastructure, the document editor and the spreadsheet editor will add many new features. The document editor has real-time editing, sidebar chat, a new commenting system, better formatting and an improved importing feature. The spreadsheet editor brings back auto-complete, adds a formula bar for editing cells and you can now drag and drop columns.

There's also an application for creating drawing collaboratively: Google Drawings. "The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs."



Google Enterprise Blog says that the offline mode will be transitioned from Google Gears to the native HTML5 implementation. "The new Google Docs editors will take advantage of faster rendering engines in modern browsers as well as new web standards like HTML5. As a result, we need to temporarily remove offline support for Docs starting May 3rd, 2010. We know that this is an important feature for some of you, and we are working hard to bring a new and improved HTML5-based offline option back to Google Docs."

Google Docs really needed a major update, especially now when Microsoft Office's web apps are about to be launched.


{ Thanks, Jonah. }

Google Docs Shows More Information About Audio Files

Even though Google Docs lets you upload any file up to 1024 MB, the service still has a lot to improve when it comes to previewing your files. Try to upload a video and you'll notice that Google Docs doesn't transcode the video and you can't watch it online.

The good news is that Google is working to fix this problem. MP3 files already show song titles and album art, but you still can't play them.


Trey D., who sent this tip, found some other interesting details:

When I upload music files (.mp3) to my Google Doc's account, regardless of the filename, the Song Title (per ID3 tag) is what comes up on the list of uploaded documents.

For example, I have uploaded a song 'Beach Boys-Good Vibrations.mp3'. The title that comes up on Google Docs, once the file has been uploaded is "Good Vibrations".

This is a change from earlier behavior that listed the filename (rather than the track name) and is a bit of a nuisance when I am searching for artist names (there is no trace of the artist name remaining).

Despite it being a little annoyance, I am hoping that Google is developing a music storage service a la Grooveshark.

Google's Jazz Interface, More Widely Available

In November, Search Engine Land reported that Google started to test a new user interface that's more consistent. "I don't like jazz, because you never know what's going to happen next," explained Google's Marissa Mayer. "I've been calling this problem 'user interface jazz.' This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down."

Instead of switching to an entirely different interface when you go from the standard search results to Google Image Search, Google Video or Google Book Search, you'll see the same interface. There's a new left-hand column that replaces the expandable "search options" sidebar. It looks like a vertical navigation bar and it shows the most relevant specialized search engines and the most useful filters that help you refine your query.

Since November, Google has tested many versions of the interface and added features like location detection and "not entirely unlike" search suggestions. Lately, a lot of users started to see the new interface and that's a clear sign that Google will release the UI soon.

Google web search results (screenshot from April)

Google's homepage and a new logo (April)

Google's new footer (April)

Google's search results (November 2009)

Google web search results (screenshot from February)

Google News results (screenshot from February)

Google's search results (March)

{ Thanks, Richard, Dan, Kherlen, Mike, Travis, Victor, Pal, Rami, Luka and everyone else who sent a tip at gostipsATgmailDOTcom. }

Google Real-Time Search Shows Popular Links

Steve Rubel spotted a feature recently added to Google's real-time search engine. If you Google a popular query and go to the "updates" section, you'll see see a list of web pages frequently linked from messages posted on services like Twitter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed etc. Try one of the hot topics from Google Trends and you'll certainly get a list of popular links.

There's also a way to find all the messages that link to a web page using the link: operator. Here's a list of messages that link to the New York Times website. Google will certainly add feeds for real-time search results and you'll be able to monitor all the links to your sites.