Call phones from gmail
Posted on August 26th, 2010 by Richard Catto 123 views
So today, I got all excited because gmail introduced this new facility where you can call phones from within gmail using their chat facility. I installed the necessary plugin and fired it up. Google generously credited me with a whole 10 US cents of airtime. I called my South African cell phone number, and it rang! So now all I needed to do was buy some airtime and I could start calling, and that’s where it all fucked out.
When I clicked the link to add airtime, google informed me that my country was not yet supported. So, there’s this wonderful VoIP facility right there in my gmail but I can’t do shit with it until google decides to get off its fat ass and take my money.
Check out the google blog entry.
Tags: Google
Filed under Google | 1 Comment »
Google vs China
Posted on January 13th, 2010 by Richard Catto 1,149 views
Yesterday, Google reacted strongly to what it alleges is widespread surveillance by the Chinese government of the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists all over the world.
According to a blog post on the Official Google blog posted on January 12 2010, Google detected “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure originating from China in mid December 2009. Google alleges that the cyber attack was successful in stealing intellectual property. In addition, Google discovered that 20+ other large companies had also been targeted by the Chinese attack.
Further investigation by Google has allegedly revealed that the Chinese cyber attacks had as its real goal the hacking of gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists. This led Google to discover that many such gmail accounts had already been comprised and were regularly accessed by (unauthorised) third parties.
It is clear from Google’s post that they feel the Chinese government has abused the trust they once shared, and as a direct result of that breach in trust, Google has now decided that it is no longer prepared to dance with China. Google has announced that they are now no longer willing to offer a localised Google.cn, which is censored, and if that means ending its operations in China, then so be it.
Tags: China, Google
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Will Google ChromeOS compete with conventional operating systems?
Posted on November 20th, 2009 by Richard Catto 1,968 views
Perhaps, but it’s too early to tell.
Earlier this year in July, Google announced on their blog that they were building a new operating system, The Google Chrome Operating System, or ChromeOS for short. Yesterday, Google announced on their blog that they are open sourcing ChromeOS and they published a whole bunch of videos to YouTube describing their vision and released their source code to the public.
Google’s idea, in a nutshell, is that they believe there is demand for an operating system that is really fast, really secure and exists purely to facilitate Internet access. All user created data is stored in the cloud, in fact on Google’s servers. All applications are web applications. So the only thing installed on the computer is the operating system. Everything else is accessed via the Internet.
Is such an operating system competition for Windows, Linux, Apple Macs?
Well, for starters, Google’s ChromeOS is not going to be designed to run on any old white box pc, like Windows and Linux are. ChromeOS is going to have custom firmware and a narrowly defined hardware specification, because that is necessary to achieve its goals of fast boot and security. Businesses which deployed ChromeOS based workstations, would have to be comfortable with storing their data on Google’s servers instead of their own, unless Google builds a ChromeOS server, but that is not currently envisaged.
So the market for ChromeOS seems to be people who are prepared to accept a machine that is very locked down, runs a limited set of applications and is tightly integrated with Google’s online services.
Personally, it doesn’t hold much appeal for me because I want to be able to play games on my PC for relaxation. Yes, it is true that a lot of what I do depends on having an Internet connection, but not everything. If my Internet connection is unavailable, I still have access to all my data, which allows me to continue developing applications, for instance. It seems to me, that ChromeOS is so tied to the Net, that if it loses it’s connection then the box running it reverts to being a giant paperweight.
If ChromeOS was developed to run on a wider range of hardware, store its data on user chosen servers and allow continued productivity if the Net connection is lost, it would be of greater interest.
UPDATE:
This Wired article (Why Google Should Cool It With Chrome OS) agrees with me and suggests that Google ChromeOS should be engineered to co-exist with other operating systems on NetBooks so that people can enjoy a hybrid experience.
Tags: ChromeOS, Google
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What did I do with my Google Chrome today?
Posted on September 4th, 2008 by Richard Catto 848 views
I’ve created application shortcuts on my desktop to directly launch gmail and the admin dashboard to this blog. Chrome brings those special windows up in an even sleeker format, discarding the Address Bar.
I created a custom search engine to search my own blog. All I had to do was right click on the Address Bar, click ‘edit search engines…’, click the Add button and fill out three fields: Name, Keyword & URL. The search URL for this blog is http://capetownnews.co.za/search/%s. The %s is a placeholder for the search terms.
You can search this blog manually by typing in http://capetownnews.co.za/search/search terms. That URL structure works for any WordPress blog with fancy permalinks enabled.
But in Chrome, I don’t have to type that long URL out. All I gotta do is type ‘cape search terms’ then select ‘Search Cape Town news for search terms” from the drop down list and hit enter, and my blog is automatically searched for those terms using the built in WordPress search functionality.
I’ve been using Google Chrome all day in lieu of my usual web browser, Firefox 3, and I’m pretty much hooked now.
Tags: Google Chrome, web browser
Filed under Google, Google Chrome | 4 Comments »
Google Chrome, it’s a whole new ball game for browsers
Posted on September 3rd, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,046 views
Wow! Where do I start?
I downloaded the brand new Free Open Source Software Google Chrome web browser (it launched today) just a few hours ago, and I am simply blown away by it!
DOWNLOAD it now and come back and read this article using Chrome.
READ Google’s comic book overview of what Google Chrome is all about. Some of it is quite technical because it is instructive about the underlying software architecture that makes Chrome a whole huge step forward in the browser game.
Google has produced video demonstrations of each new aspect of Google Chrome, which must surely soon become a rival for the number one web browser.
It is FAST, it is slick, it is smooth, it is clean. So very very clean.
It’s actually quite hard getting used to such an uncluttered and clean interface.
Not everything works yet. Songza produces fuzzy text. The YouTube progress bar does not show the downloaded part.
It does not have any plugins or toolbars.
But it is a new toy and you should play with it and see it for yourself, so I’m not going to write a mini-review of it here. The objective of this article is simply to encourage you to go get it today!
Then come and write your own review of it in the comments.
Tags: Google Chrome, web browser
Filed under Google, Google Chrome | 9 Comments »
