Google’s Nexus One vs. iPhone, Droid and Palm Pre

The below info is American-focused but you can get an idea of the benefits and pitfalls of each phone.  Also, as I have always maintained, go for the phone which would suit your particular needs. Not everyone needs an iPhone despite it’s Cool status, which seems to be slowly dying out now.  If you’re a business person, get a Blackberry.  If you’re an all media, social, business, game and traveller junkie… stick with the iPhone… It’s all about utility, yo.

All info was thanks to Billshrink

Radiohead’s “House of Cards” First Ever to be Premiered by Google

Check out the first-ever music video to debut courtesy of Google and also the first to be shot without cameras. Only lasers and scanners were used in the production and, which is why Thom Yorke looks kind of like a sonogram.

So… “interact” with the video on Google. There’s also a making-of video that talks about Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR, the technology used to capture all the imagery in 3D.

The video is directed by James Frost of Zoo Films.
Link
: Radiohead, House of Cards, Music Video, No cameras, Google

Jim Cramer Attacks Google and Apple

Jim Cramer, the web entrepreneur and star of his own TV Show “Mad Money” on MSNBC (you might remember him from the part he played in Iron Man), recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he hates media stocks, maybe not all of them, but he hits on two media companies in particular…

“The world got changed by two companies,” he says. “Apple is taking away the profitability of TV, and Google is taking it away in print. And it’s never going to reverse.”

In the near term, Google is the bigger villain.

“It’s just a parasite,” he says. “It doesn’t create content, it steals it, borrows it, shares it.”

What he says does have some weight… recently both New York Times and the publishing company Gannet, both reported shortfalls in revenue and I’m sure other media are feeling the pinch too.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Google, Media, Jim Cramer

Brand New Google Reader for iPhone

The guys at Google Reader really wanted to maximise the iPhone’s capability with Google Reader and have developed a Beta application which facilitates this. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new design is very similar to the desktop, making it quick and easy to act on items. It’s set in the list view, so you tap it and it expands… simple.  Starring, sharing, and marking unread are all done in oneplace, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. This makes accessing your Google Reading list that much faster.

You don’t automatically get sent to it since it is still in beta, so bookmark the link above. There’s also a discussion group for those wanting to test it out fully and provide feedback.

From the Google Reader Blog

ReadBurner and NetVibes Team Up

Following on from the post about Powerset Semantic Web Search and Web 3.0. ReadBurner, which shows news from the point of view of how many people have shared it via Google Reader’s Shared Items function, has tied up with NetVibes (About an hour ago) via the Ginger API in order to provide a similar function as Shared Items in Google Reader.

The tab is already live and available on the Readburner site. You can test it out now.

So from Smart Searching we now have Smart Filtering :) Web 3.0 here we come… and as Chris Brogan put it, Why let Google have all the fun?

Google Killer: Powerset Semantic Search Engine

Having been long predicted as the shaping the next generation of search, Semantic Web Applications are now coming to the fore with Powerset leading the way. Powerset has released its beta version, allowing the public to finally try out the new key word technology. Ushering the new era of search, Powerset hopes to change people’s expectations of search by offering a far more intelligent and efficient form of searching, at least in theory.

“We’re changing the way information is searched by doing a much deeper analysis of the pages we index,” said Scott Prevost, Powerset’s product director.

Keyword engines treat pages as word bags, indexing their content without grasping its meaning, he said. Meanwhile, Powerset’s engine, applying technology developed in-house as well as licensed from Xerox’s PARC subsidiary, creates a semantic representation by parsing each sentence and extracting its meaning. “Meaning is what we index,” he said.

Google’s Marissa Mayer has even elaborated on the benefit of the semantic web…

“People should be able to ask questions and we should understand their meaning, or they should be able to talk about things at a conceptual level. We see a lot of concept-based questions — not about what words will appear on the page but more like ‘what is this about?’. A lot of people will turn to things like the semantic Web as a possible answer to that,” she said.

She also said that Google seems intelligent more through brute force because of the amount of data it crunches rather than it being really “smart” and working out what the user really means when they are searching for certain terms.

I can already see Google Scurrying to upgrade their system to incorporate this though… they certainly have the budget to do it. The current form of Powerset is limited, consisting only of millions of pages from Wikipedia and Metaweb Technologies’ Freebase, a Web-based structured database of information. Whatever it is, here’s to ushering in a new era in search, one that will ultimately provide a real challenge to the Google’s and Yahoo’s of our increasingly connected world.

Could this possibly be the beginning of a Web 3.0?

Google Maps provides Street View

This is a brilliant new addition to Google Maps, especially those looking or directions. It now provides you with a picture of the place you are looking at and shows you where to turn. This is becoming more and more like the Star Trek Scenario where Science fiction is hitting reality. I don’t see too much of al ine between the integration of GPS into this system and then the system will know exactly where you are an give you directions as you move… with pictures.

But that’s the future, right now, this is an awesome development. I doubt South Africa will see this for a while, Google Maps doesn’t even cover any of our areas fully at the moment. But there’s always hope :)

Google has built its Street View into Google Maps’ ability to provide driving directions, the company said Tuesday.

With the feature, a small camera icon appears next to the intersections in the turn-by-turn directions. Clicking on the icon brings up a view of the intersection so people can see the area in question.

Google Street View is available in 44 areas of the United States, and there are strong signs Google is bringing Street View to Europe. Street View is available through the Google Maps programming interface so that those using Google Maps can add Street View abilities to their Web sites.

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