MetaFilter posts tagged with google

Google, all up in your grid

cedar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:19:52 -0800

Google is rolling out free PowerMeter software that works with the TED 5000 smart meter to transmit near real time utility usage to Google servers. This data can then be securely displayed on your Android or iPhone. With stimulus money earmarked for smart meters they will eventually become ubiquitous as standards evolve from the current patchwork. Not only can we yell at the kids to turn off lights from work but we (meaning they) will have huge datasets of very specific and identifiable information. Meth manufacturers beware.

People Have Their Preferences

blasdelf — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:03:14 -0800

We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die — Umberto Eco "like[s] lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia"

Google won't search for Chuck Norris because it knows: You don't find Chuck Norris; he finds you.

not_on_display — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:01:09 -0800

Autocomplete Me: feeling lucky just got weirder.

Google Swirl

boo_radley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:22 -0800

Google Swirl is a new Google Labs experiment that lets a user search through images in a "visual and semantic" way, allowing users to search through radiating treeviews of conceptually related images. (requires flash)

Rupert Murdoch (and Mark Cuban) vs Google

filthy light thief — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:54:34 -0800

Sky News Australia political editor David Speers interviewed Rupert Murdoch earlier this month, and covered a number of topics, including search engine access to news content under the Murdoch umbrella. In short, Rupert Murdoch is looking to a day when Google won't search News Corp. stories, and people will pay for their news (again). Murdoch's views of Google aren't new, claiming Google is stealing from News Corp. Murdoch's Google gambit set the internet buzzing, as briefed on The Opinionator. But Rupert Murdoch isn't the only one looking for Google to fall, with Mark Cuban proclaiming that Google can be taken down (again, or is that still?)

Python + C = Go. Google's Programming Language

FusiveResonance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:06:37 -0800

Say hello to googles new concurrent programming language Compiles faster than c/c++ and runs just as fast. Garbage collection + concurrency included

Google answers data transparency concerns with Dashboard

zarq — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:18:56 -0800

This morning, Google launched a new feature called "Google Dashboard" that lets users view (and in some cases control,) what data is being stored on a range of more than 20 Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Latitude. Services not currently included -- Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, and Book Search among others -- will be added in later versions. This new service may help address privacy concerns that have been raised over the years regarding various Google services. More from: * The Unofficial Google Blog * TechCrunch * The New York Times * CNET

Walking the territory redraws the map.

gleuschk — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:58:28 -0800

Destination: Argleton! Visiting an imaginary place. A fake town in Google Maps.

Goats, The Obvious Choice in a Recession

meta87 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:17:21 -0800

Towns everywhere are looking for ways to cut costs during the current economic downturn. Andover, Mass has come up with one interesting solution, goats. Andover is not the only place goats are being used in the place of weed wackers and lawn mowers. Google is also going with goats, citing the reduction in pollution and the cuteness factor. Possibly they may also attempt to lighten the mood in the office, by mixing in some fainting goats.

Google Music Search

bigmusic — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:21:34 -0800

Google Music search is now live - powered by Lala and Ilike. Also provided are supplemental links to relevant Rhapsody and Pandora pages. Some are are not impressed with the search feature. Related: Lala's streaming iphone app is awaiting Apple's approval.

Five years from now, this post will appear in a sideblog with posts from five years ago

twoleftfeet — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:56:44 -0800

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google talks about what the web will look like in five years. The internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content... content will move towards more video... today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years.

Ghost Walk

emjaybee — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:21:01 -0800

The Infamous Witch. El Protector. Opryland. The Strange Case of Scenic Drive. Blogger Aunt B. of TinyCatPants uses Google Maps to link to the "locations" of her original Nashville-area ghost stories, one for every day of October. Link takes you to the map; start with "The Infamous Witch."

In This Light And On This Evening

rocket88 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:45:40 -0800

To promote their soon-to-be-released album, In This Light and On This Evening (coming October 27), British indie rockers Editors have made an interesting hack of Google Maps Street View. If you go to the Editors website here, you can wander through the streets of London looking for landmarks set out by the band. At each of nine locations—one for each song on the record—you’ll hear music from the new album which, they say, was “inspired by the mood and magic of London at night.” And because they use Street View, we get 360-degree shots of each spot. via exploremusic.com

Mystery Google

Ljubljana — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:12:06 -0800

Mystery Google gives you what the person before you searched for. {via}

How Google Plans to Stay Ahead in Search

geoff. — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:50:02 -0800

"We ran over 5,000 experiments last year. Probably 10 experiments for every successful launch. We launch on the order of 100 to 120 a quarter. We have dozens of people working just on the measurement part. We have statisticians who know how to analyze data, we have engineers to build the tools. We have at least five or 10 tools where I can go and see here are five bad things that happened." Udi Manber, Google’s vice-president of technology, explains the business of running a search department. "It takes a very, very good engineer about two years to really understand search." From a surprisingly candid series of articles detailing the business of Google, "Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?" CEO Eric Schmidt on the economy, “If you go back to last year, we began to see slowdown in U.K. quite early. We initially thought it was an error in our system. We made adjustments, and it wasn’t until September and October, when it became clear that it was a global collapse. From our perspective, the low point was somewhere in the spring…somewhere in May or June.”

Eric Schmidt on journalism and the future of newspapers

reenum — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:20:05 -0800

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a talk at the Newspaper Association of America convention on April 9, 2009 in San Diego. He speaks about how Google and newspapers might co-exist in the future. Here is a transcript of Schmidt's April talk. Schmidt also spoke at length with Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently about Google's responsibility to newspapers.

There be pirates but we can't find them.

dabitch — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:43:46 -0800

Googling for the Piratebay brings up less results than before, and no front page at all, as well as give you an interesting notice at the bottom of the page - "In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 16 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org." The notice is unavailable.

Google Asks: "What Would Email Look Like, If It Were Invented Today?"

zarq — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:45:13 -0800

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) Features include real-time collaboration, (including concurrent editing and control of each "wave" thread,) natural language tools and a variety of APIs which users can use to embed content in other sites. Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 (80min video -- an abridged 10 minute version is here. Wave login page is here. Google Wave Federation Protocol is an open source project for developers. The WSJ reports that invites are now for sale on EBay. Something similar happened when Google launched GMail in 2004.

Save the most people by reporting potholes

outlier — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:42:20 -0800

Last year, Google launched Project 10^100, a call for world-changing ideas to be funded to the tune of 10 million. At the time, MetaFilter was generally sceptical and Slashdot irreverent. The shortlist has been announced for voting.

Are polymathy and general knowledge in decline?

Kattullus — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:20:04 -0800

Two articles from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine about changes in knowledge production and acquisition, The Last Days of the Polymath by Edward Carr and Is Google Killing General Knowledge? by Brian Cathcart. The first deals with the implications of increasing specialization in all field of human activity and the second with whether people are not committing facts to memory because they are so easy to look up on the internet.

Google Sidewiki: all your comments are belong to us

johnny novak — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:16:18 -0800

Google Sidewiki serves a small wiki page down the side of any site on the web: a place where people can make annotations and comments without having to sign into the site itself. You have to install Google Toolbar to use it, as well as signing up to Google Webmaster and activating your Google profile, however, Google believe it will bring a new age of transparency to the social web. Others, however, see it as a spammers' charter, an attempt to hijack all comments on the web, a tool for brand and reputation attacks or the final nail in the coffin for Google's much vaunted 'don't be evil' tagline. Even Jeff Jarvis, the ultimate Google fanboy, is unhappy with it.

LIFE is Good

Knappster — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:49:41 -0800

Already hosting the LIFE Photo Archive (previously), Google today announces that it has "partnered with Life Inc. to digitize LIFE Magazine's entire run as a weekly: over 1,860 issues, covering the years from 1936 to 1972."

Google Book Downloader

manny_calavera — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:22:14 -0800

Convert "Full View" books in Google Books to PDF . Download. Instructions (via )

Google Street View

Matthias Rascher — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:15:30 -0800

Google Street View is currently taking pictures in and around my home village. Google Japan has released a rather cute animated video explaining how the whole process works. Its main aim seems to be to respond to all the criticism regarding privacy issues. It's still cute, though.

“We believe this is a revolution...Content retrieval is now centralized and production is decentralized.”

voltairemodern — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:29:36 -0800

Google makes public domain books available for instant custom printing. Show up anywhere that has one of the book printing machines. Select one of the millions of public domain titles in Google Books digital library. Pay around the price of a mass market paperback. The machine then prints a copy of your desired book* in a few minutes, as demonstrated in this lovingly narrated video. Yes, the machines have been available for a while. (Previously on the blue.) What hasn't been available until now is the Google Books digital library. How exactly Google's support will affect the spread of these book printing machines remains to be seen, but it probably won't hurt their sales. *Say the 1766 edition of Sam Johnson's Dictionary. Or one of James Maxwell's books, like Matter and Motion. Or the original Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. What I'm trying to say is you have some good options.