In the news
In the news
Interesting links for today:
Google going for gold
Some interesting speculation about whether Google would then look to invest in international communication (acquiring Skype, which is apparently very big in Europe and Asia) or e-commerce (purchasing/merging with eBay?).
After a few years of seeing Yahoo and MSN fight it out on the financial battlefield for the new wave of customer services demanded by customers, it's been refreshing to see some genuine technological innovation from the Google camp in products whose main draw isn't about cost, but about new ways of doing things. I'm a big fan of the gmail interface, even though it took some getting used to, and the interactivity of Google maps is far superior to what everyone else is offering.
My favorite features of gmail, in no particular order:
- free space. Can't beat 2 gigs.
- conversation grouping. As an experienced message board reader, grouping emails by subject makes total sense. Plus, the interface fine-tunes the conversation by removing previously quoted emails - one of the most annoying things for me in the standard webmail or Outlook model is having multiple emails which have 2 lines of new content and tons of repeated stuff - gmail hides the redundant content.
- archiving and eschewing mail "folders" for mail "labels". This is a smart way to leverage the power of the search engine to prevent me from having to figure out how something should be categorized - now I just have to remember keywords.
- keyboard navigation. The shortcuts are much more intuitive than Yahoo's, and appear to have some basis on the Linux vi text editor.
Things I'd like to see them enhance:
- wildcard searching. Right now, searching on "group" will not return emails that have the word "groups" in it.
- ability to view more than 50 emails per page. 'Course, this will be performance limited, both on the server side and the client (browser) side.
Google maps rules too. The ability to click and drag to navigate over a map, rather than clicking on an arrow to go in a particular direction... why didn't anyone think of that before?
3D television in development
I had a conversation with my dad a while ago about how one would go about adding smell to the television experience. Looks like the Japanese are thinking along the same lines, and adding in 3D.
High school uses iBook in lieu of textbooks
Figured it was just a matter of time... digital media may help us slow down forest depletion for paper production. However, one concern I have is that with an entire generation growing up on computers, is whether anyone is teaching these young people healthy computing habits - i.e. resting the eyes, stretching hands and arms for typing, etc. Otherwise, 20 years down the line, we may end up having a generation of blind RSI sufferers.
Interesting links for today:
Google going for gold
Some interesting speculation about whether Google would then look to invest in international communication (acquiring Skype, which is apparently very big in Europe and Asia) or e-commerce (purchasing/merging with eBay?).
After a few years of seeing Yahoo and MSN fight it out on the financial battlefield for the new wave of customer services demanded by customers, it's been refreshing to see some genuine technological innovation from the Google camp in products whose main draw isn't about cost, but about new ways of doing things. I'm a big fan of the gmail interface, even though it took some getting used to, and the interactivity of Google maps is far superior to what everyone else is offering.
My favorite features of gmail, in no particular order:
- free space. Can't beat 2 gigs.
- conversation grouping. As an experienced message board reader, grouping emails by subject makes total sense. Plus, the interface fine-tunes the conversation by removing previously quoted emails - one of the most annoying things for me in the standard webmail or Outlook model is having multiple emails which have 2 lines of new content and tons of repeated stuff - gmail hides the redundant content.
- archiving and eschewing mail "folders" for mail "labels". This is a smart way to leverage the power of the search engine to prevent me from having to figure out how something should be categorized - now I just have to remember keywords.
- keyboard navigation. The shortcuts are much more intuitive than Yahoo's, and appear to have some basis on the Linux vi text editor.
Things I'd like to see them enhance:
- wildcard searching. Right now, searching on "group" will not return emails that have the word "groups" in it.
- ability to view more than 50 emails per page. 'Course, this will be performance limited, both on the server side and the client (browser) side.
Google maps rules too. The ability to click and drag to navigate over a map, rather than clicking on an arrow to go in a particular direction... why didn't anyone think of that before?
3D television in development
I had a conversation with my dad a while ago about how one would go about adding smell to the television experience. Looks like the Japanese are thinking along the same lines, and adding in 3D.
High school uses iBook in lieu of textbooks
Figured it was just a matter of time... digital media may help us slow down forest depletion for paper production. However, one concern I have is that with an entire generation growing up on computers, is whether anyone is teaching these young people healthy computing habits - i.e. resting the eyes, stretching hands and arms for typing, etc. Otherwise, 20 years down the line, we may end up having a generation of blind RSI sufferers.
posted by Bob at
11:57 AM
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