Andre Huard

Today at Google I/O, the company made the announcement that everyone was waiting for — Google TV. While some glitches in the demo (with the Bluetooth keyboard) prevented it from being a “wow” moment, the implications are pretty clear what Google is going for. That is, the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or rather, advertising to the 4 billion TV users worldwide.

Google noted that while computer usage is huge with 1 billion users, and mobile is even bigger with 2 billion users, TV is the real massive medium with 4 billion users around the world. Further, Google notes that people spend 5 hours a day on average in the U.S. watching TV — and that’s more than ever before. Then the real stat came out. 70 billion dollars. that’s the annual ad spend on television in U.S. alone.

Video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, Google says. And while they’re not the first to attempt this, Google thinks they can get it right. There are four things they’re focusing on:

• With Google TV, you’ll spend less time finding, more time watching
• We’ll also show you more ways to personalize content
• We’ll make existing TV much more interesting
• This is much more than a TV

“TV meets web. Web meets TV” is the slogan Google is going with for this new endeavor. It will work as a new box — you’ll just hook up your existing cable or satellite box to it. All the hardware will include a keyboard and a mouse — but it will work with Android phones too. And you can use multiple Android devices to control the same TV — no more fighting over the remote.

You can also use the Android devices to speak to your TV — voice search on the TV.

Google TV is built on Android (2.1 right now, but they’ll upgrade it later). It runs Google Chrome for the browser. And yes, it has Flash (10.1).

Also cool, since Google TV is Android-powered, Android apps will work on the TV. With the device, there will be two app frameworks: web apps and Android apps. A new SDK for the Google TV is coming as well. And YouTube has a new product they’re launching for Google TV: YouTube Leanback — this is an optimized way to use YouTube on a big screen.

Google TV will be open sourced in both the Android and Chrome source trees.

Google has partnered with multiple device makers to bring the product to market. There will be three Google TV devices. Sony will have TVs and Blu-ray players with Google TV built in. Logitech will have a companion box. Intel will be powering all the devices with the Atom processor.

Google has also partnered with Dish Network — there will be an enhanced Google TV experience with it. And they have a retail partnership with Best Buy.

These will all launch in Fall 2010. But the platform won’t launch for developers until 2011.

As a bonus, as Google showed during its demo, Google TV is one hell of a way to search for “MILFs” from your couch (see pic below).

To think, it was about this time last year that Google first unveiled its collaboration tool Wave, and today the company's taking out the invitational step and opening it to the public at large -- which begs the question, did anyone not have an invite that wanted one at this point? It'll also be now available in the enterprise-centric Apps suite for no extra charge. On the developer side of things, expect some more open source code be unleashed, including most importantly the rich text editor. Can't say we've really dug around in the service ourselves since its beta launched, but co-creator Lars Rasmussen tells us we should be giving it another go. He further acknowledged that they've got some work to do on educating users on the best ways to use the service, which at this point seems to be mid- and small-scale collaboration. To that end, expect some new tutorial videos, and with any luck, some amusing animation.

Google Wave opens doors to public, asks old friends for new chance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hotmail, Microsoft's webmail service, has improved a lot in the past two years. Hotmail is now a modern web application that no longer traps users's data and focuses on important things like speed, usability, fighting spam and integrating with other communication services.

The latest Hotmail update, that will be released as part of Windows Live Wave 4, tries to show that Microsoft finally managed to develop a better email service than Gmail and, in many ways, succeeds.

Hotmail improved its spam detection algorithms and it's now able to tweak some parameters based on your actions. Hotmail can now flag messages as spam even after you've received them.

Another interesting improvement is that Hotmail categorizes messages, so you can quickly find the messages from your contacts, messages from mailing lists or notifications from social networks.

Hotmail no longer has limitations for email storage and the main reason is that large attachments can be stored in Windows Live SkyDrive. "With Hotmail, we've combined the simplicity of sending photos through email with the power of Windows Live SkyDrive so that you can send up to 200 photos, each up to 50 MB in size, all in a single email. You can send all your vacation photos at once without worrying about attachment limits," explains Microsoft. This is an important feature that's missing from Gmail and it's surprising that you can't upload photos to Picasa Web Albums or upload documents to Google Docs directly from Gmail.

Microsoft also integrated Hotmail with Office Web Apps, so that documents can be previewed and edited online, without having to install an office suite. Now that attachments are stored in a single place, the total attachment limit for a message is 10 GB, while Gmail offers about 7 GB of storage for all your messages.

Hotmail added many of the features that used to be available only in Gmail: conversation view, full session SSL, watching YouTube videos inline, but Microsoft managed to make some improvements. The active view feature doesn't work only for YouTube, it's enabled for many other sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), so you can accept invitations or reply to a Twitter message directly from Hotmail. There's also a feature that lets you create a single-use password for signing in on public computers.

Google has a lot to do to catch up with the new Hotmail, but that's a good thing. Competition is what makes products better.

The Onion posted a funny video about an imaginary Google service that whispers targeted ads into users' ears. The main benefit of the service is that it lowers the cost a phone, but the ads aren't very subtle.

As voice recognition software becomes more powerful, it's quite likely that phones will be able to convert a conversation into text in real time and offer related information, including links to maps, events, email messages and even ads.


In 2008, Google's AdSense blog posted an April Fool's Day joke about AdSense for Conversations, "a new type of monetization solution that puts the 'context' in contextual advertising. In just a few simple steps, you can begin displaying ads that are relevant to the topics you're discussing -- in an unobtrusive screen above your head. Anyone taking part in the conversation can hit the ad with their hand to immediately take advantage of the product or service being offered."

{ via Jérôme Flipo }

At this point, Google realizes that simply talking about browser speed isn’t enough. They have to show you.

Alongside the latest beta release of Google Chrome, the company has made a series of videos that intend to do just that. The Rube Goldberg-ian setup is fairly amazing. While the speed test videos themselves aren’t out just yet, Google has posted the making of the video (which I’ve embedded below). It’s a must-watch.

Says Google:

These speed tests were filmed at actual web page rendering times. If you’re interested in the technical details, read on!

Equipment used:
- Computer: MacBook Pro laptop with Windows installed
- Monitor – 24″ Asus: We had to replace the standard fluorescent backlight with very large tungsten fixtures to funnel in more light to capture the screen. In addition, we flipped the monitor 180 degrees to eliminate a shadow from the driver board and set the system preferences on the computer to rotate 180 degrees. No special software was used in this process.
- 15MB/s Internet connection.
- Camera: Phantom v640 High Speed Camera at 1920 x 1080, films up to 2700 fps

Again, all of this is simply to highlight just how fast the latest build of Chrome is. And it is fast. Google says the beta release today (version 5) represents the “most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release.” Even more remarkable, “In fact, looking back in time, Chrome’s performance has improved by as much as 213% and 305% on these two benchmarks since our very first beta.” The first beta release was in September of 2008. Not even 2 years ago.

The new beta build (which works on Windows, Mac, and Linux) also adds some new features. Those include the ability to sync browser preferences, extensions in incognito mode, and a number of HTML5 features such as geolocation, web sockets, and drag-and-drop ability. This is also the first build of Chrome that has Adobe Flash baked-in to make it more stable, and perform better.

That’s all great, but I just want to see these videos. Google says they’ll post them tomorrow — and Google’s Matt Cutts predicts they’ll go viral. Google owns a little site that can help with that.

The Universal Network Cable is another great gadget that helps me quickly and easily switch to the cable I need when working. You select the cables by rotating the yellow collar to one of the five cables including:

ROLLED: Connect a host to a Cisco(TM) router or switch
CROSSOVER: Communicate directly between computers without a hub or switch
STRAIGHT-THROUGH: Use as a standard RJ45 patch cable
ATM / LOOPBACK: Test if a network card is working by checking for link lights with no need for a hub or switch
T1: Connect to DDS lines / T1 trunk lines

I have had mine a couple of months and found it to be well built and working exactly as advertised. Though you might not need all of the cable types, being able to quickly switch makes this gadget well worth the $30. While I don't use it often, it has been a time saver when I've needed it most.

-- Blaine Gardner

Universal Network Cable
$30
Available from Think Geek

Manufactured by Cortex Design

Okay, so the title of this post is slightly misleading. But, it is a question I get often. Folks call, email and message me asking if there is an add-in for Microsoft® Office that provides the same user experience as within SolidWorks.

The answer is yes!

Have you ever opened an Office document in read-only mode, made changes and then discovered you forgot to check out the document? This add-in allows you to check out the document on the fly without losing your changes.

Also, it provides the typical ribbon toolbar and the same task pane interface provided in SolidWorks so that you can instantly view document status.

Office2PDM is an add-in for Microsoft Office that brings the document management functions of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM directly into Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

 

Want to try the add-in or learn more? Visit their website: www.office2pdm.com

Believe it or not, Sony managed to shift 12 million 3.5-inch floppy disks in Japan last year -- presumably to die-hard old schoolers. Alas, time waits for no one, and the venerable data transporter that started its life way back in 1981 is going to all but cease production by March of next year. Sony was the last of the major manufacturers to keep churning these bits of plastic out, but soon that too shall be no more. Having already shut down operations in most of the world, it's now noted the end of life for its domestic market, and thereby effectively consigned the floppy to the past. Good riddance, you might say, but we still remember fondly the wonder we experienced upon tearing apart our first 5.25-inch floppy disk. Ah well, the diskette goes the way of the cassette, guess that was predictable.

Sony shutting down Japanese floppy disk sales by March 2011, kills a tech dinosaur originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey iPhone, welcome to 2007. Following Opera's script in building grassroots hysteria to goad Apple into approving a contentious app, developer Greg Hughes is teasing a video of his Wi-Fi Sync app to the peoples of planet internet. As the name implies, the app promises a complete sync of your iPhone or iPod touch with iTunes without having to tether and looks pretty straightforward (and occasionally useful) based on the video demonstration found after the break. Greg says he'll be submitting it to Apple for approval at the end of the week -- good luck with that Greg, we hope to be seeing you on Cydia at the very least.

Continue reading Wi-Fi Sync: wirelessly sync the iPhone with iTunes... in your dreams (video)

Wi-Fi Sync: wirelessly sync the iPhone with iTunes... in your dreams (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you're a diehard iPhone user waiting for a similarly-gorgeous Android phone before you jump ship, you could spend time pining for a new HTC or Dell. Then again, the Droid you've been looking for might be right under your nose. Intrepid Linux fan planetbeing claims to have ported a debug version of Android to the iPhone itself, drivers and all, and you'll find a thoroughly convincing demonstration of his bona fide dual-booting Apple device taking calls, playing music and even surfing the web after the break. While the iPhone isn't the speediest Google phone around, it's not all that sluggish, either, and with the iPhone's hardware buttons remapped to Android controls, planetbeing seems to get along just fine. Now, let's see him work on some pinch-to-zoom, eh? Video after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Android ported to iPhone?

Android ported to iPhone? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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