As the Android kernel code is now gone from the Linux kernel, as of the 2.6.33 kernel release, I’m starting to get a lot of questions about what happened, and what to do next with regards to Android. So here’s my opinion on the whole matter… First off, let me say that I love the Android phone platform. Until last week, I used my developer G1, that I bought, every day. It worked wonderfully for me, and as a user, I was more than happy. I’m also very happy about Android from a technical perspective. It’s amazing that Google has taken the Linux kernel, and nothing else from a “traditional” Linux system, and created a portable and robust phone platform. It’s so different that you can drop in a “real” Linux system image on top of the Android system, and they both work just fine with no changes needed.
Full Article (linux kernel monkey log - kroah.com/log/linux)
When Google launched Extensions for Chrome in December, they had around 300 of them ready to go in their gallery. A day later, that number was already up to 500. By now, there are a few thousand available, and that number just got multiple by several times as Google has announced that the latest official version of Chrome, version 4, now natively supports Greasemoneky user scripts.
Full Article (TechCrunch - techcrunch.com)
Late Wednesday evening, Google employees posted an “Internet-Draft” outlining proposed changes to the DNS protocol that allow authoritative DNS servers to see the addresses of clients. This way, geographically distributed content delivery networks can tailor their answers to a specific client’s network location. So a client from California would talk to a server in California, while a client in the Netherlands would talk to a server in the Netherlands.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Dead pixel in Google Earth by Helmut Smits
An 82 x 82 cm burned square, the size of one pixel from an altitude of 1 km.
In the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major speech yesterday on Internet freedom, a speech in which she called out countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Iran, and China, most governments have yet to respond. China, however, was quick to reply after dealing with the Google issue for a week already.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Your day begins with a wake-up call from your Google Android phone. As you run to the shower, you hit Google News and check headlines, then Gmail. Your first appointment of the day has been moved to a new location; Google Maps will direct you there. Quickly update your expense report—including the printout of that sales presentation using, say, Google Template—and shoot them to the back office in India (in Hindi, if you prefer, with Google Translate). Your boss wants to discuss your group’s contributions to some marketing documents? Lean on Google Groups. You’re not even out the door yet. You have the rest of the day to search for work-critical information on the Web while you’re at the office—to say nothing of snatching a few moments to download a game, check stock prices, organize your medical records, share photos and pick a restaurant and movie for the evening. How convenient.
Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users’ privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC’s recent “Inside the Mind of Google” special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a “trusted friend,” Schmidt responded, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Exchange mail policy support iffy, and security and configurability are subpar
What a difference a device makes. With Verizon Wireless scheduled to introduce its first Android smartphone, the Motorola Droid, on Nov. 6, Android application development is exploding—project starts increased 94 percent between September and October according to mobile in-application analytics provider Flurry, a leap attributed to the Droid’s pending launch. “Flurry market data shows that Android continues to gain interest from application developers, and that iPhone is no longer the only game in town,” said Flurry president and chief officer Simon Khalaf in a prepared statement. “Developers who used to develop only for iPhone are now adding Android applications to their lineup in record numbers.”
Google has angered the Android enthusiast community by sending a cease and desist notice to a third-party developer who is building a popular custom version of the open source platform. Google doesn’t want its proprietary bits included in cooked ROMs.
People hate IE6; they’ve made that abundantly clear on the web. Unfortunately, plenty of people are still stuck using it for reasons such as their work not letting them upgrade. So Google is doing something about it.
So here’s the deal with Wave: If you deal in technology, and you get this one wrong, you’ll miss the boat. And it’s a big boat. If, on the other hand, you get this one right, you have the potential to do some incredible innovation. In a nutshell, this is the next revolutionary leap in Internet application architecture. Maybe the first truly revolutionary leap since HTTP itself. I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but first I wanted to read fully thru and digest the specs and available code. I haven’t done any posts about XMPP for quite a while, but you’re going to start hearing a whole lot about it, and not just from me.
Have you been hearing all the chatter about Google Voice but still haven’t caught up on what it is? Ars gives you the rundown on Google’s calling service and how you can use it to screen and forward calls, send free SMSs, and even get your voicemails transcribed and sent to your inbox.
July 8 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., owner of the most- visited Internet search engine, is developing a computer operating system based on its Chrome Web browser, taking aim at Microsoft Corp. in its strongest market.
Google has previewed a new technology called Wave that combines collaboration with chat, e-mail, event planning, document sharing, and nearly anything else you can think of. The service makes use of the Federation protocol and already offers a set of APIs for developers to work with.
