NewsArchive

A burst of posts from 2 ex-Google employees on their time at Google. Quite interesting, but sounds like fairly standard start-up stuff - "they were all so bright", "and then I saved the company/project with my idea". But cute in any case, and useful to disillusion those of us intrigued by Google.

I haven't laughed so hard for a while (ok, yes, it's for programmers only, and VB programmers at that)
Verity Stob on VB

Apparently she's coming to the Register:
Verity Stob to write for the Register.

Donors not so anonymous
New Scientist article on how even anonymous sperm donors will increasingly be discovered by their children using online DNA databases.

Stamps
BBC article on how a stamp collector achieved "first comprehensive set of US 19th Century stamps" through pricey swap.

The Register as a humourous and interesting article using Google's satellite images for views of sensitive military establishments. It features lovely pictures of airforce bases and evesdropping stations. The article is a follow-on from their first article.

My particular favourite is their A-10 Warthog pictures Pick a cold war aircraft and see if you can spot it at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson.

This reminds me of the fun I had using multimap to look up satellite images of listening stations in the UK, back in June 2002.

The new digital cameras page includes links to digital camera reviews, retailers, price comparisons and photo sharing sites.

Google has launched a VoIP service of their own, called Google Talk to allow users to chat on the net. They enter an arena busy with large search and portal companies who already have their own voice messaging services Yahoo's Messenger, MSN's messenger and of course Skype (see the page for current providers).

Where do they go from here?

I'd suggest they have two possible destinations (neither of which are necessarily exclusive).

1. Delivering wireless access to all of the US.
2. Video on demand.

Both suggestions need lots of bandwidth, which they seem to be buying up according to a Business 2.0 article (and reported on News.com previously). Business 2.0 suggest that they are heading for offering wireless internet access across the US. The internet does appear to be becoming somewhere to search for essentials, such as places to eat and stay. Perhaps they have calculated that offering a "local search" for mobile devices with ads would be worthwhile, especially as mobile devices become more common.

On the other hand, moving into Video on demand would take advantage of their existing search and large-scale data storage skills.

More concretely they could be simply trying to cut costs and decreasing their reliance on internet infrastructure.

I'd suggest as a mid-term strategy towards video on demand they will be following some of the strategies already followed by Yahoo - i.e. offering subscription music downloads to use up some of that bandwidth. In the past Google have said that they are interested in testing video uploads and downloads. Why wouldn't they test the water with music downloads?

With messaging moving from text to voice, surely the next step for all voice messaging companies must be video messaging (and leaving/storing video messages)?

A new page on buying MP3 players includes links to mp3 player reviews, advice and comparisons. It also includes advice on music downloads on buying CDs and DVDs cheaply to fill up your mp3 player.

A Windows XP-only application that over broadband takes images in realtime from Google's image database and allows you to "fly" from one point of the Earth's surface to another. Look around your holiday destination in semi-3d. View your journey to work as the eagle flies.

It would be nice to think that Yahoo didn't give up their patent hold over and investment in Google for a pittance. Google now has a market value in excess of Yahoo's. Does the non-mention of "non-revocable" in the settlement over the patent now mean that Yahoo will extract blood from Google in the future?

Yee haw - round 'em up. The picture being the highlight of the article.

One function, Map reduce, allows easy parallelisation of large programs:
http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi04/tech/dean.html

Video of Google explaining itself
Papers on Google techniques

Their computational power looks accessible by their programmers
slide 5
from slideshow

Alternate takes:
news.com coverage
internet news coverage

GFS (Google file system):
GFS video
gfs paper

The site has been reorganised, with some new pages being created (Electronics, Computing, Interests and Travel), and some content being moved to other pages.

I have also added a few links to the moneysavingexpert.com site, which appears to have some of the same goals as this site (saving money).

Search engine blogs, everyone's doing it:

Yahoo's search blog
Google's search blog
MSN's search blog
even Ask Jeeves.

Bob Geldof is a bit peeved at being called up for everything related to Africa and would rather be known for his music
BBC Article

Containing links to price comparisons of UK wireless networking kit and ADSL/broadband hardware.