The Ubiquitous Alexa; is the Amazon AI assistant starting to be everywhere?

Kinda looks that way. The title of the article below refers to cars, but the article itself goes into much more. More about Alexa being incorporated into other appliances and, well, have a look:



Alexa will make your car smarter -- and vice versa
The integration into vehicles is yet another sign of how dependent we're becoming on AI.

[...] Within a span of just two years, Amazon's cloud-based voice service has spread far beyond the Echo speaker with which it first debuted. Alexa has gone from being an at-home helper to a personal assistant that can unlock your car, make a robot dance and even order groceries from your fridge.

At CES, both Ford and Volkswagen announced that their cars would integrate Alexa for weather updates, navigation and more. According to CJ Frost, principal architect solutions and automotive lead at Amazon, the car industry is moving into a mobility space. The idea isn't restricted to the ride anymore; it encompasses a journey that starts before you even get in the car. With the right skills built into the voice service, you can start a conversation with Alexa about the state of your car (is there enough fuel? is it locked? etc.) before you leave the house. It can also pull up your calendar, check traffic updates and confirm the meeting to make sure you're on track for the day.

Using a voice service in the car keeps your connection with the intelligent assistant intact. It's also a mode of communication that will be essential to autonomous cars of the near future. I caught up with Frost and John Scumniotales, general manager of Automotive Alexa service, at the Las Vegas convention center to trace the progression of the intelligent assistant from home speakers to cars on the road. [...]

The rest of the article is in an interview format, discussing where this is all going, and how and why, and what the future holds. Read the whole thing for embedded links, photos, video and more.

There have been lots of reviews on Youtube comparing Alexa with Google Home. People who use a lot of Google Services, claim the Google device is smarter and therefore better. But it's not that simple.

I have both devices. If you ask your question of Alexa in the format of: "Alexa, Wikipedia, [your question here]", the answer you get will often be as good or better than what Google can tell you. Alexa has been around longer, has wider integration, and more functions available. It can even add appointments to my Goggle Calendar, which Google Home says it cannot do yet!

Google Home does have some features it excels at, such as translating English words and phrases into foreign languages. If you own any Chromcast dongles, you can cast music and video to other devices, which is pretty cool. Presently it's biggest drawback is the lack of development of applications that work with it. However, it's POTENTIAL is very great, and a year or two from now we may see a great deal more functionality. It has the advantage of access to Google's considerable data base and resources. It could quickly catch up with Alexa, and perhaps surpass it. But that still remains to be seen.

It's not hard to make a video that makes one device look dumber than the other. But in truth the devices are very similar. Both can make mistakes, or fail at questions or functions. Sometimes one does better than the other. I actually like having both. It will be interesting to watch them both continue to evolve. To see if Google can close the gap created by Amazon's early head start. To see how the two products will differentiate themselves over time.

For the present, if you require a lot of integration with 3rd party apps and hardware, and if you are already using Amazon Prime and/or Amazon Music services, you might prefer Alexa. If you you are heavily into Google services, and/or Google Music or Youtube Red, you might prefer Google Home. Or if you are like me, an Amazon Prime/Music member and experimenting with Youtube Red and owner of chromcast devices, you may prefer both! Choice is good!

     

Google's Redesign of it's Headquarters

It looks like a "Future World" theme park:



Google's future campus looks like a sci-fi utopia

Google has revealed eye-popping ideas for a redesign of its California headquarters that symbolize how far the company wants to move beyond its core search business.

Plans submitted Friday to the Mountain View City Council include lightweight block-like structures—not stationary concrete buildings—that can be moved around as the company invests in new product areas. These areas now include self-driving cars, solar-powered drones and robots. Google’s self-driving car team, for instance, has different needs than search engineers, the company said in revealing its plans.

On top of those modular structures would be translucent canopies that can control the climate inside while letting in natural light and air. The canopies would free the spaces from traditional limitations like walls, windows and roofs.

It’s not hard to imagine Google’s future campus serving as a playground for the company’s pursuits outside of search. Plus, it sounds like Google is going for something like a futuristic city for its thousands of employees and local residents. The company is already known for its on-campus perks encouraging employees to maximize their time on campus, but the new plans elevate that concept. [...]

Read the whole thing for more pictures, and embedded links. It's way cool! A very futuristic vision to be sure. Bold and ambitious. It will be interesting to see how the end product turns out, and how much it adheres to this vision.
     

Is Google Plus the next Borg? IMO, it's TMSTDW

It sure looks like they are angling to be! I found this video kinda funny, kinda creepy:



It was kinda informative too. It certainly nailed Facebook's faults. But I'm not ready to jump onto Google+ either. And if the video is right, I won't have to, because it will be inevitable...

I remember the early days of PCs and the internet. I would get tired of it and take a break from them for days at a time, sometimes even a week or more. My life did not revolve around the internet or the computer.

Now, I go on-line at least once a day, for the weather report, if nothing else. I usually glance at the news headlines on Google as well, just to get a glimpse of what's happening in the world. It's faster than watching TV, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. It saves time!

Convenience. Speed and convenience. A quick way to get the information you seek. And there is much education and entertainment content too. A nice place to visit, but I still wouldn't want to live there almost 24/7. The internet's a good thing, but even so, too much of a good thing isn't necessarily a good thing.

What made me even look at this was, an online class I was interested in. The teacher wanted the students to sign up with Google+, because that was her primary mode of communicating with them (using something called "Hangouts"). So I tried to find out more about Google+. And my opinion of it so far is: TMSTDW (Too Much Sh*t To Deal With). But of course, if it's inevitable, I won't have to learn it, I can just wait until it assimilates me. ;-)
     

Android 4.4 "KitKat" reduces fragmentation of the platform, emphasizing standalone apps

Android 4.4 KitKat Continues To Reduce Fragmentation Of The Platform Thanks To Google Play

With the release of Android 4.4 (codename KitKat, in an interesting marketing move with Nestle), Google has taken more control of the software stack of the mobile operating system, leaving less control in the hands of the networks and addressing the issue of fragmentation in Android.

This is not a new strategy from Google. Over the last year more and more services are becoming standalone apps in the distribution, rather than an integral part of the firmware. This means that the apps can be updated through Google Play, rather than waiting for a new version of the operating system slowly moving along the chain that stretches from Mountain View, to the handset manufactures, to the smartphone lines, and then to the carriers, before possibly being made available to the public.

Contrast that to the path that Google has for updating an app in Google Play. They simply push the updated app into the Google Play Store, and with countless Android handsets set to automatically update apps from the Play Store, then code will roll out across the ecosystem.

While many people will focus on the share of phones who have updated the firmware to the next ‘notable number’ in the Android, Google has partially sidestepped that process. There’s no longer a dependency on passing the network certification processes to roll out changes to the applications and many of the library features in Android, because they are no longer part of that package. They’re higher up the chain, and their update is completely under the remit of Google. [...]

Android 4.4 KitKat: Google's simpler, integrated operating system designed for every phone

Google Android 4.4 'Kitkat': seven things you need to know
     

A $100 Google TV box?

It's in the works:

Chinese OEM plans sub-$100 Google TV box

There is still hope for the future of Google TV.

A Chinese company called Hisense is working on a new set-top box featuring the search giant's operating system for the living room, and plans to launch it in the US market for less than $100.

It comes on the heels of Vizio's "Co-Star," a competing Google TV box that has been doing notably well in the market since its launch earlier this summer.

"Hisense adds even more innovation to the growing list of Google TV-powered devices available around the world. We're working closely with partners like Hisense to bring services from Google and multiple other providers to your TV with an experience tailored for the living room," said Google TV partner manager Mickey Kim in a statement.

Google TV has had a mixed history. It garnered a lot of attention in 2009 when its partnership with Sony was unveiled, but it was a huge commercial flop because of the high cost of entry and very limited feature set.

The platform effectively relaunched this summer, though, and it is starting to gain steam agin. [...]

     

What "do no evil" Google Knows about You

And what it does with it:

Google knows too much about you

(CNN) -- If you use Google, and I know you do, you may have noticed a little banner popping up at the top of the page announcing: "We're changing our privacy policy and terms." It gives you the choice to "Learn More" or, another option, the one I'm betting most people followed, to "Dismiss."

Who wants to read about what Google plans to do with all that information it has about us?

[...]

If Americans -- or people anywhere -- decided to take up Google's offer to check out its new policy, they would discover something so troubling, so frightening, really, that it would override the national tendency to leave companies alone to make money how they see fit. At least in the case of companies such as Google -- and now Facebook -- which know more about us than even our closest friends.

Here's what Google knows about you, what it stores right there on its servers, waiting for a hacker:

Google has every e-mail you ever sent or received on Gmail. It has every search you ever made, the contents of every chat you ever had over Google Talk. It holds a record of every telephone conversation you had using Google Voice, it knows every Google Alert you've set up. It has your Google Calendar with all content going back as far as you've used it, including everything you've done every day since then. It knows your contact list with all the information you may have included about yourself and the people you know. It has your Picasa pictures, your news page configuration, indicating what topics you're most interested in. And so on.

If you ever used Google while logged in to your account to search for a person, a symptom, a medical side effect, a political idea; if you ever gossiped using one of Google's services, all of this is on Google's servers. And thanks to the magic of Google's algorithms, it is easy to sift through the information because Google search works like a charm. Google can even track searches on your computer when you're not logged in for up to six months.

Facebook has even more interesting stuff: your pictures, your comments, your likes, your friends, your un-friends.

[...]

Google's famous motto is "do no evil." I won't accuse Google of deliberately doing evil. It has done much to improve our lives. It makes no secret of the fact that it seeks to make profits, which it richly deserves. I do believe, however, that it deliberately tries to deceive us when it claims the new privacy policy seeks "to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible."

I followed the instructions and with some difficulty eventually downloaded pages upon pages of personal material about myself from Google. What I was looking for was a simple, shall we say beautiful, button telling Google not to save anything I don't explicitly want it to save. But there was no such button.

Google, like Facebook, owns trillions if not quadrillions-plus bits of information. They mine it, use it to sell ads, algorithm it. But my real fear is not Google. My real fear is that computer technology has turned into an arms race between good guys and bad guys. Google may see itself as a jaunty white hat wearer, valiantly protecting all our information. And it may be doing it to the best of its ability. But hackers are hard at work all the time. [...]

Is the concept of privacy, as we've known it, destine to become a thing of the past?

Read the whole thing for embedded links, and more about what is being attempted to contain this collection and use of personal data.

And here is something you can do, before March 1st:

How to delete your Google browsing history in three simple steps . . . before it's too late to hide your secrets


Also see:

Social Media Dangers in our Brave New World

Are Facebook's "Social Plugins" making the service less popular with older users?
     

Is Google's Android OS the "Linux Desktop" that will challenge Microsoft?

There is a case to be made for it:

Android the real Linux desktop threat to Windows

[...] Aside from being an open source Linux distribution, which is already starting to gain traction in the mobile phones space, Android has the backing of Google. And as Microsoft well knows Google is no Canonical, Novell or Red Hat. Google is a heavyweight - it's a powerful company with considerable resources.

[...]

From most accounts and my own experience Android is intuitive and user friendly on mobile hardware such as the HTC Dream. However, there is no doubt that Android compared to full blown operating systems like Windows, Mac OSX or Ubuntu Linux is still very much a lightweight.

It is also true, however, that the trend of desktop computing is toward mobility - notebooks and netbooks. In the era of hotspots and ubiquitous Internet, consumers and business users alike want something they can take on the road with them.

The trend to netbooks and low-power consumption mobile devices favours lightweight operating systems. Users - particularly sub-notebook users - want to do much if not most of their work in the cloud. They may not be able to do everything, such as watch DVDs or play games, but they can still accomplish most of what's required to run their part of the business they work in.

Likening Android to Windows is like comparing Google Apps to Microsoft Office - it's not quite there yet. Steve Ballmer is wrong when he says Google Docs can't even do a footnote, but his point that Microsoft Word is much more powerful is well taken - for now. However, for many, myself included, Google Docs, Calendar and Gmail are more than good enough.

The critical success factors behind operating systems are device drivers and applications. More than anything else, this has been the downfall of Ubuntu and the other Linux distribution hopefuls.

Starting from the mobile phones environment and working upward, Android, backed by Google, is likely to succeed where other Linux distributions have failed. It is likely to garner support from both device manufacturers and applications vendors.

It's early days and there's a long way to go but if a Linux desktop is ever to make an impact in the mainstream, then it is likely to be Android. Ironically, by the time it takes the mantle of market leader from Microsoft, the cloud may well have made the desktop a thing of the past.

It makes some good points. But the "cloud" may not be embraced by everyone, for everything; it's a concept that's still evolving.

One of the comments left at the end of the article made a few good points on that:

[...] As for netbooks, they are such incapable pieces of hardware that the only way to get any real work done on any of them is to use them as dumb terminals, or slow-witted terminals, for the cloud. But, as Richard Stallman, one of the founding fathers of the open-source movement, has railed about, the cloud surrenders control to a corporate third party and promises a vassal-ship to corporate authority that will be, if anything, more subjugating than the rein of Microsoft has wrought. The cloud not only presents problems of reliability; it also will, I think, prove in many cases to be more expensive than shrink-wrapped software, and it gives a corporation, almost certainly a powerful one like Google or Amazon, possession and control of your data and your applications and, through the use of proprietary APIs, will lock your data and applications to that corporation.

Servers and networks get more expensive and more prone to failure as they scale and the intensity of use increases, and, thus, comes a dramatic increase the price of the service. And because the could will consists at best of an oligopoly of few corporations and because users' data and apps will be locked to that corporation's particular cloud, i.e., network, servers, and OS, users, who foolishly surrender their independence to the some corporation's cloud, will be able to do nothing but pay the price that their could vendor demands. And for that king's ransom, users will get a cloud that becomes less reliable as it becomes more popular.

But the main tenor of Stallman's criticism, which is related to oligopolistic control, is that once your rely on a cloud for your data and applications, you're owned. As tough as it is or is perceived to be to switch from Windows to OS X, Unix, or Linux, that is nothing compared to trying switch when all your data and your business critical apps are in a cloud. When you are completely in the cloud, you don't have anything left to switch. And for consumers, they may be spared paying the full costs of cloud computing, but they will pay instead with their personal information and by ceding the right to access them with advertisements 24/7, I am with Dr. Stallman: This rush towards cloud-computing is foolishness and the greatest hidden form of slavery to be foisted on users of computers since, well, Windows.

If the cloud is what netbooks shall bring, I suggest that we all take a pass.

The cloud could have some uses, but I doubt it will be all things to all people. There will always be people who, quite sensibly IMO, want direct access to and control of their own data, without relying on a 3rd party's infrastructure to provide that access and control.


Also see:

Google: Android is “the Linux Desktop Dream Come True”

The Linux Desktop Came on Little Cat Feet
     

Chrome Browser now for Linux and Mac

Chrome for Linux Beta May Change Browser Habits

Have you seen the Google Chrome for Linux beta?

Linux enthusiasts that I've known use a variety of browsers including Konqueror, Opera, and others. Without question, Firefox is today's premier Linux browser. With all these choices, why would you even consider using something new?

[...]

I installed the 64-bit Linux version on my tried-and-true Asus notebook, running Xubuntu. On my machine I read and agreed to the licensing agreement, then downloaded the file. After downloading, I opened the resulting Deb file with the default GDebi package installer. The installer ran through its paces and after completion, I found a new Google Chrome item in the Xubuntu Applications -> Network menu. A quick click put me into the browser.

Let me tell you that Chrome is fast. The startup page was rendered before the Compiz-fueled spinning window was even fully opened on my desktop. And that is on a high-performance notebook.

As you would expect, Chrome has the standard features of all mainstream browsers, including tabs, history, and themes. The task bar is utilitarian and basic, without any extra text boxes, dropdowns, or buttons (see Figure 1). [...]

Google finally unveils Chrome for Mac, Linux

The wait is over: Google has finally brought out a version of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux operating systems.

The beta browsers, announced yesterday, are a version of Chrome that had previously been available only as a developer preview.

The Mac and Linux Chrome browsers are expected to graduate to the next level of maturity, "stable", on 12 January. [...]

It will be interesting to watch this evolve. Firefox may have some real competition.
     

Is there a "right to not be offended"? NO.

Google apologizes for results of 'Michelle Obama' image search

(CNN) -- For most of the past week, when someone typed "Michelle Obama" in the popular search engine Google, one of the first images that came up was a picture of the American first lady altered to resemble a monkey.

On Wednesday morning, the racially offensive image appeared to have been removed from any Google Image searches for "Michelle Obama."

Google officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

[...]

The California-based company then explained that search results rely on computer algorithms that take into account thousands of factors.

"The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results," it said.

The company said that the integrity of its search results is extremely important.

"Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it."

A user alerted Google to the picture via an online help forum two weeks ago.

The altered image can be found here, although clicking on this link will take users to a photo that many will find offensive.

The Internet was abuzz Tuesday and Wednesday with reaction to the image. Some online users demanded that the photo be blocked, while others said it should remain on free speech grounds.

"There is no way to defend this heinous incident," said a Twitter user who gave his name as Alheli Picazo of Calgary, Canada. "People often claim their right to free speech to mask blatant racism and insulting bigotry and always seem to get away with it," he told CNN via e-mail. "When it comes to issues of discrimination, hiding behind free speech just doesn't cut it."

A Twitter user who gave his name as Jerry Wright of Hoboken, New Jersey, disagreed.

"I am absolutely disgusted by this picture, but the Internet has thousands and thousands of offensive images. Should Google get rid of all of them? Where do you draw the line," he asked CNN via e-mail.

In 2004, Google posted a similar note of apology when a search for "Jew" pulled up anti-Semitic sites as top results. [...]

I followed the link to the image, and from there, to the site that posted it. The person who posted it there said said:

WTF IS THIS? MICHELLE OBAMA AS AN APE HUH?

[...] ***Ed. Note***

Over the last few months, we’ve received a LOT of feedback from readers regarding this picture. And I wanted to be clear on a few things.

We DID NOT generate this photo. It was seen on another site (www.Celerbtityapes.com) and as with all of our other posts, we reported on it.

We will NOT be removing this picture because this is a story, and it our policy NOT to remove stories based on anything but editorial error. If you choose to visit the source site, you will see that this picture WAS NOT created out of racially motivated ignorance. Had that have been the case, as a journalist, an American and most importantly, a Black woman, I would have NEVER posted it.

I appreacite your feedback. Thank you.

I agree with the editor. People can have whatever opinions they like about it, and express them too, but there in no reason to remove it. Free speech is about free speech, not preserving people's comfort zones.

There is no right to "not be offended". I see things every day that offend me. I don't expect the world to conform to me; that's completely unrealistic. Duh.

How many altered pictures of Laura Bush have I seen, obscene, pornographic, vulgar and hateful? Too many to count. I've developed a great technique for dealing with such rubbish; I ignore it! Fortunately it's a wonderful, easy to lean technique that can be mastered by anyone.

Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't? In a free society, WE do, each one of us, for ourselves. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm offended by anyone who thinks they have the right to decide for me what is acceptable!
     

What is Google's "Chrome OS" all about ?

Underwhelmed By Chrome OS? That's Kinda the Point

When Google unveiled its open source Chrome OS on Thursday, many commentators were quick to dismiss the new operating system as unimpressive and underwhelming. Citing everything from the browser interface that represents the entirety of the user experience to its limited hardware support and inability to install apps or play PC games, early critics have slammed Google's cloud-based OS for being exactly what it is intended to be: lean, fast, and simple.

To my eye, all this criticism appears to miss the point of Chrome OS--and indeed, the point of most of Google's services. Of course, this is nothing new for Google.


Simplicity By Design

At the launch of the company's eponymous search engine in 1998, Google stood out from the pack of increasingly cluttered search portals with which it competed. In a time when leading Internet companies sought to become destinations by loading up their home pages with news, weather, entertainment links, shopping deals, and anything else they could think of, Google took a different tack by presenting a clean, white page with little more than a search field under the site's name.

I distinctly recall several colleagues scoffing at the simplicity of Google's home page at the time. Where were the news articles? The stock tickers? The pictures of celebrities? Why would anyone want a home page consisting of nothing but a search engine? Yet Google's pundit-defying search tool quickly became the home page of choice for millions of users worldwide.

Over time, Google rolled out additional services, including a few built to deliver the very services its home page lacked. But with every new service it launched, Google retained its characteristic simplicity, putting information--not splashy design--at the foreground.

Chrome OS is an obvious extension of Google's design simplicity, and it's no great surprise that many observers are unimpressed by the sight of it. It's little more than a Web browser. On first glimpse, it's nearly identical to the Chrome browser that's currently available for Windows PCs. And that's exactly what Google is going for.

The central principle behind Chrome OS is that the browser is the focal point for most computing tasks. So Google has put it front and center in Chrome, reducing the rest of the operating system down to a minimal Linux kernel that drives only the most essential hardware components for a Web-centric user.

Life in the Cloud

Google has designed Chrome OS as a platform for people who use computers primarily online, and the company is betting that many folks will happily trade their desktop apps for alternatives in the cloud. Naturally, this won't appeal to all users. I'd even say it won't appeal to most users, at least initially.

But multiple lines of evidence suggest that cloud services are the computing model for the future--a fact that even desktop-dominant Microsoft has embraced, as it prepares to roll out its Office Live services as a companion to its longstanding desktop suite (a companion that many savvy users will undoubtedly use in lieu of the desktop suite). What lines of evidence am I talking about? Enterprise adoption, device-agnostic work habits, and nearly constant wireless connectivity.

Cloud computing is now a standard business practice worldwide. [...]

The article makes a pretty good case for Google's strategy. They were right before, and they may well be onto the next big thing here. If you find it interesting, I recommend reading the whole thing, the source article also has many embedded links.


Related Links:

Google Releases Chrome OS Code

Will Chrome OS merge with Android?

Google Chrome OS debuts, goes open source

Chrome OS website/homepage: The Chromium Projects
 
   

Is Google going to be the Linux King?

By "King", I mean, will they succeed more than anyone else in taking Linux into mainstream use as an operating system? At the very least, it looks like they are set to be a major player in that arena. Here is why:

The Future of Linux is Google
Google's slow, steady march into the OS realm has begun to pay off. It's time for the Linux world to rally.

I used to think Ubuntu was destined to lead Linux into the mainstream, but now it's looking much more like Google--not Canonical--will be the first Linux vendor to truly challenge Microsoft.

Google's migration into the operating system business has been so gradual that many industry watchers have shrugged it off. When the company announced its Android OS for phones, it looked interesting. There was nothing new about the idea of using Linux on a handset, and (apart from Google's involvement) little reason to expect it would carve out substantial market share in the competitive smartphone arena. But, with about 20 distinct Android handsets in the hands of more than three million users worldwide--and about 30 more devices expected to roll out in 2010--Google's mobile OS is now looking like a force to be reckoned with. [...]

It goes on to describe how Google has been successful at promoting Linux on phones and handheld devices, hitting Microsoft in a area where it is weak. Google is poised to release it's Linux Chrome OS on netbook computers, further expanding it's reach into a Market Microsoft wants to dominate. If Chrome succeeds in the netbook market, it could also conceivably extent that influence into the desktop market as well.

The article explains the hows and whys of it all. And why Microsoft has a real competitor in Google. I say great, more choices for us all.


Also see:

Google buys Gizmo: a new phone company?
   
 

Google buys Gizmo: a new phone company?

I first posted about Gizmo back in February of 2007:

Gizmo Project: Call Pope Benedict for Free

Gizmo creator Michael Robertson had some interesting things to say about Gizmo and about telephone service. Well now that Gizmo has been bought by Google, there is talk of a new phone company:

Google poised to become your phone company

(Wired) -- Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.

Seriously.

Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype  but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.

Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5's founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice.

It's a potent recipe -- take Gizmo5's open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google's massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice's free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.

Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone.

Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the Internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies.

That's not just pie in-the-sky dreaming.

Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either. [...]

I think this is something to watch. It might become something really big, and make big changes in the way phone companies do buisiness.
     

Search Engine Evolution; What's coming next?

Are search engines becoming more "intelligent"? See for yourself:

New search engines aspire to supplement Google

(CNN) -- We may be coming upon a new era for the Internet search.

And, despite what you may think, Google is not the only player.

New search engines that are popping up across the Web strive to make searches faster, smarter, more personal and more visually interesting.

Some sites, like Twine and hakia, will try to personalize searches, separating out results you would find interesting, based on your Web use. Others, like Searchme, offer iTunes-like interfaces that let users shuffle through photos and images instead of the standard list of hyperlinks. Kosmix bundles information by type -- from Twitter, from Facebook, from blogs, from the government -- to make it easier to consume.

Wolfram Alpha, set to launch Monday, is more of an enormous calculator than a search: It crunches data to come up with query answers that may not exist online until you search for them. And sites like Twitter are trying to capitalize on the warp-speed pace of online news today by offering real-time searches of online chatter -- something Google's computers have yet to replicate. [...]

The article goes on about how Google has come to dominate web searches, capturing nearly 64% of all web searches. The article details how some newer search services are competing by offering things that Google can't, with some interesting examples.

The much-talked about Wolfram Alpha, or Alpha for short, harnesses massive computing power to answer users' questions, even if they're never been answered on the Web before.

"It's not a new Google. It's not supposed to be. It's a new thing. It's very complementary, in a way, to what search engines do," said Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research, which created Alpha.

People need to get away from the idea that every 3-inch-long search bar online acts just like Google and Yahoo!, he said.

If you ask Google a question, the search engine's computers scan the Web for matching search terms and come up with answers that make the most sense statistically. Alpha, by contrast, pulls information from existing data sets that have been approved by the site's math-minded staff. The site then computes an answer to your question.

An example will help this make sense.

Say you wanted to find out nutritional information for your favorite recipe. On Google, you would have to search each ingredient individually and then add the calories and fat grams together yourself. With Alpha, you can type in the full recipe and the site produces a completed graphic that looks like it came right off the side of a cereal box. Read about a CNN test of 'Alpha'

Some search sites are trying to get better at understanding what their users want. [...]

The article gives more examples, it's worth reading the whole thing. A fascinating glimpse into the near future. Kewl.
     

Look at One Year in Just 40 Seconds

This is the display sample video for "Today's Featured Videos" on iGoogle:



Very cool! If you go to the video's Google page, there is another video in the right sidebar by the same author, called "One Year in Two Minutes".
     

New Picasa 3, beta version, looks fantastic

Introducing Picasa 3.0 (beta)



I posted a while back about Picasa 2.7, the stable version that I currently use. It's a wonderful, useful, Free to download and use program from Google, that runs on Windows and Linux.

As the video demonstrates, the Picasa Beta Version 3.0 looks amazing, with many new and wonderful features. But it's still Beta, potentially unstable, so I'm going to wait for the final release. Unfortunately I couldn't find a target date for that, but when it happens I'll be sure and blog about it again. In the meantime, these new features look like something we can look forward to.

Webmonkey has a short review on the latest Picasa beta for Linux:

Picasa for Linux 3.0: Photo Management Done Right


     

Picasa, Google's free photo manager & editor

I recently downloaded a copy of Picasa, and was very impressed. It scanned and found ALL of my photo and image files, on all of my hard drives, and made them all available on one long scrolling page. I've rediscovered pics that I forgot I had! If your photos have gotten so numerous that organizing them seems impossible, Picasa will be an excellent tool to help you get a handle on the situation.

It also offers some basic editing tools for improving photos. The program is available free of charge, and it's a cross-platform program; versions are available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

From Marziah Karch at About.com, a review of the software:

Take a Look at Picasa - Review of Google's Digital Photo Management Software

[...] Picasa will organize your photos by date and initially retains the same file structure as your hard drive. The main area shows thumbnails of the images, and along the right side is a scroll bar to navigate. Thumbnails in the library are grouped by folder, but they’re all displayed (with some scrolling.) This means that you don’t have to repeatedly click to navigate to a new folder, which is a nice touch.

You can move thumbnails from folder to folder directly from Picasa, and it will confirm and then move the corresponding file on your hard drive. This makes it much easier to organize albums. [...]

It's a short review, but it gives you a good summary of all the basic functions, I recommend reading the whole thing.



You can download Picasa from the main page of their website:

Picasa by Google