Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Posted on April 11, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

Invitation to join Google App Engine

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Google App Engine launched a couple days ago and I signed up to be a beta tester but hit what seems to be a major waiting list. Initially Google only allowed 10,000 developers to join but I’ve read that those invitations were snapped up within the first 10 minutes of the launch.

Anyway, imagine my excitement when I received this email in my inbox this morning.

Eager to test the new service out I went to the website, logged in, and can now build my first application.

Currently the service only supports Python so now I have to figure what to do in this space…!

Posted on April 1, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

Google and Virgin start Virgle Inc.

Meet Virgle - an elaborate plan by Richard Branson (Virgin), Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google) to colonise stars, in particular Mars, over the next 100 years.

The 100 year plan includes the following key milestones.

• 2010: Choosing a Site
• 2014: Low Earth Orbit
• 2015: Virgle Base 1
• 2016: Flying to Mars
• 2108: Virgle City

A Virgle website has been setup and contains a well thought out plan including a myriad of information that kept me reading for about an hour. The crux of the concept is that Virgle Inc. will put up $10-15 billion over the next two decades and the community (i.e. normal people like you and me) will help build this New New World into an Open Source Planet.

There is a Virgle application test to see if you cut the grade and afterwards you are invited to submit a short 30-second video clip to YouTube explaining why you should be included in project Virgle. After an undefined period of time Virgle will chose 20 candidates to go with Larry, Sergey and Richard to live on Mars and start the first Virgle community.

All of this just seemed impossible to me but the fact that there are two videos, one with Richard Branson and one with Larry and Sergey, made me doubt my initial instincts. The fact of the matter is that Richard is a space pioneer and Larry and Sergey have already stated their desire to have an office on the Moon so while it seemed completely ludicrous it was believable at the same time.

A search on Google for virgle is it real revealed an odd looking 404 - Page Not Found on the Virgle site. Details of which follow below.

oh, all right. Fine. April Fool’s. Ha, ha, ha. It isn’t real. There. Are you happy? Does it please you to drag us out of our lovely little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams? Is that really what you need to hear? Fine, you’ve heard it. Virgle isn’t real. Yet!

I must say I’ve prided myself with being able to spot the various April Fools jokes on the Internet today but this one got me hook, line and sinker.

Posted on February 27, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

How important is money?

I read a very interesting blog post by Paul Buchheit titled Is there more to life than money? which got me thinking about whether money directly relates to happiness.

Paul is an ex-Googler who was the creative genius behind Gmail, AdSense and suggested the company’s now-famous motto Don’t be evil. He left Google in June last year and is now an angel investor and founder of the startup FriendFeed.

The context of Paul’s post stirs up a couple of interesting issues, namely;

• Will you make more money working for a startup?
• Does money make you happy?
• Love what you do - even if you are in a 9-5 job.

There is a lot more to his post but these are the core points of interest I took from it.

Many will argue that money is an object that, while making life a little easier, doesn’t or can’t buy happiness - my view is slightly different and I think I’ve had enough education in this regard.

Here’s my take, in the simplest form:- when I had money life was never better and when I didn’t have it I couldn’t cope with life.

I think it’s very easy to say money isn’t important when you’ve got a lot of it but when you haven’t got it, it’s the most stressful part of living life. Financial burden is the #1 stress in the United States and I would imagine that South Africa is not far off that.

I do subscribe to the notion that money isn’t everything but I also believe that it is a major, critical facet of life today. If we can take the need for money out of our life’s equation then we will be free to live life as it’s meant to be lived but as long as it remains a means for survival nobody can tell me money isn’t important or doesn’t create an immense amount of unhappiness and stress.

Financial freedom = Happiness

Posted on October 19, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

AAARRRGGGGHHHH

Driving me mad….

Posted on October 16, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

So I’m pissed. How can I stop this?

Yesterday I wrote a post called Using Social Media to track the Mondli arrest which highlighted my efforts in setting up Jaiku to aggregate what’s been written about in the Mondli Makhanya affair.

Within hours I stumbled upon the follow two websites.

Now this kind of thing is happening almost every single time I post a new item and it’s really pissing me off. Not only is my content being scraped but I’m sure this is having an effect on my Google rank? The only good thing about these above-two sites is that they’ve swapped the order of the words in my heading around so it almost looks unique but still……

I have to figure out a way to stop this but I just don’t know how.

Posted on September 1, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

The Hidden Google Earth Flight Simulator

Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and a SR22 4 seater. You have the option of commencing the game from your current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here.

Below is a short video of my first experiences using the flight simulator. I took off from San Fransisco airport and landed, well… you’re just going to have to watch but I can say it was a very bumpy ride.

Posted on August 29, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Is Social Media dead?

In today’s Blogumist column in The Times Paul Jacobson has written a piece titled Social Media is dead. Paul is a friend and a colleague but I have to say this article spurred some very negative reactions in me and I just think that this article is so far from the truth it’s scary.

Paul argues that

“Although Social Media is only just picking up steam here in South Africa, if you read the feeds on blogs and news sites in the United States and Europe it is fairly obvious that the whole thing is running out of steam.”

Now I’m not sure what news sites Paul is subscribed to but the ones I read tell the exact opposite but don’t take my word on it, let the evidence talk.

Robert Scoble, A-List blogger and Vice President of Media Development at PodTech.net, recently argued that social media sites Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years.

Michael Arrington, another A-Lister and owner of the popular Techcrunch blog, also linked to Scoble’s article and points out that

Scoble argues that the search results from sites such as Mahalo will appeal to more people due to their ability to be socially constructed as opposed to Google’s computer generated results.

While Arrington doesn’t necessarily agree with Scoble he’s also not disagreeing with Scoble’s thinking.

I’m pretty sure that while these are some good examples that Social Media is here to stay many will say that this only relates to the ever changing face of search and doesn’t really equate to any level of social networking or social media.

Silicon Valley start-up investor Esther Dyson appeared on the Charlie Rose show where she discussed her current projects in the technology space. During this interview she was asked if Facebook is the new Google and to that Dyson replied

“[It is] if you think Google is the next Microsoft.” So, is Google the new Microsoft? Dyson said, “It could well be.”

From my perspective I have to say that Social Media is changing the way we communicate on a global level. Search is becoming more relevant because of social media and will continue to do so for many years and social media sites are giving us a platform to communicate, share and evolve.

Paul goes on to claim that

All the new launches are reinventions of Social Media companies that have been around for years now or are simply new applications of existing tools. There is no real innovation in this space. Social Media has climaxed. It is all downhill from here.

Facebook’s recent emailing capabilities allow users to now replace traditional email communication and their Book Swap feature highlights how social media can relate to real-world practical uses so I’m just not sure about this statement either.

Is Social Media dead? I think not.

Posted on August 21, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Gmail offers additional storage

A new feature to Gmail is the ability to now upgrade your disk space from the free 2GB limit. I came across this by chance really as I was checking my account settings page and I noticed the following:

Clicking the Upgrade link brings you to a Google Checkout page with various upgrade options.

Posted on July 10, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

A review of Google Apps

Google Apps has been out there for some time now and when I initially looked at it I wasn’t really sold on the benefits of using the service. To me the free version appeared to function in exactly the same was as a normal Google Account but I’m pleased to report that this is actually not the case.

Some of the key problems I’m faced with today is centralisation and sharing. What I mean to say is that I have so many different email accounts that I’ve really struggled to manage and having some accounts download on a computer while others I check online is not ideal to say the least.

With the recent introduction of Gmail’s POP access you could now check up to 5 other email accounts and have those accounts mail imported to your Gmail account but this just wasn’t cutting it for me. The main reason this system is flawed is evidenced by the fact that Gmail only checks your other POP accounts every 45 - 60 minutes and in my world this just isn’t good enough. I need email immediately - end of story.

My other problem is the ability to share documents, calendars and other information with people in my family which up until Google Apps was a mission.

About two weeks ago I decided to try out Google Apps and went through the process of setting up a new domain, hartmanlife.com, to use with the service. This is a pre-requisite by the way so if you don’t have your own domain or can’t administer your domain name then Google Apps is not for you.

I’ve been very pleased with the results thus far, even despite some inherent flaws with the system and the following is a quick howto on setting up the interface and using Google Apps.
(more…)

Posted on May 10, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

iGoogle and Afrigator

It’s no secret and it’s been out for a long time but iGoogle is really starting to amount to something. Previously known as Google Personalized Homepage the team at Google are now officially calling it iGoogle. Simply put iGoogle allows you to customise the Google homepage with relevant Gadgets that you can add such as Gmail, News, Weather and a lot more.

The screenshot above shows my new iGoogle page which I’ve customised to suit my needs and for whatever reason is really groovy in my opinion.

What’s really cool is that I decided to write a Gadget for iGoogle, using the Google Gadgets API, that pulls in the RSS feeds of Afrigator so now I can stay in touch with what’s happening on Afrigator just by visiting Google.

I don’t know if any of you will find this useful but I’ve made this Afrigator Gadget publicly available and you can get it by visiting this link or you can just click the Add to Google button below.

It’s version 1 so I’ll still make some more changes to it as I pick bugs up but you can completely customise this Gadget in any way you like plus it functions in almost an identical way to Afrigator by allowing you to preview a post before visiting a blog site. You can also add the Gadget multiple times to have color coded feeds which means you have full control over which RSS feed you want to display on your iGoogle page.

Let me know if any of you find this useful.