October 24, 2006

Google Teacher Academy

Google again. Don't say I'm bothering you and that I should start writing about something else, because you would miss things. A week or so ago another one of thosesurveys popped up. As well as over here (Holland) as over there (the US) they come and go several times each year, but this one was to betaken seriously, done by the Stanford School of Medicine.

This time one out of eight grown up Americans exhibited at least one possible sign of problematic Internet use. No idea if I would be part of the digital junkyard, but if so, it's a reassuring idea that my addiction is covered by a salary.

I definitely am a bit addicted to Google. As a user, but even more as a watcher, a Google Watcher with a problem: it's been all too much lately, almost impossible to keep up withwith the boys and girls at Mountain View are doing. I'm not the only one, even Sergey and Larry sometimes are out of breath because of the pace in which young and smart developers are screaming for attention and budget for new products.

Two weeks ago I wrote about business models that are floating on the web, model with which you van set up a profitable webtoko. But also as manager of a little shop or company you can save yourself a lot of money by means of Google products. By terminating your much too expansive Microsoft applications and licenses. To begin witch the Outlook and Exchange servers; Gmail isn't only free, it works so much better and easier than Outlook/Exchange, and youcan keep using your own domain name and e-mail addresses.

You can share documents and spreadsheet by - well - Google Documents and Spreadsheets, and if you start using Maps for Mobiles, youdon't have to buy navigators for your drivers or yourself anymore.

Rent a smart kid who attacks the Google API, an does logistics by integration Documenst, Spreadsheets and Maps.

While there are a lot of other Google gadgets that you can use one way or another, Google starts doing things for education. One of the new products is Sketchup, bye means of which you can designon line - what else, how else? - 3D models. It's no a simple thing for beginners, so Google has launched yet another Google newbie: the Google Teacher Academy. Pfffff, what is next to come ... ?

 Posted: October 24, 2006, 01:16 PM | Comments (0) |

October 23, 2006

A Star is Born?

Now what . . . . ? A star is born?
Go to my Geocoder, or Google Maps if you don't trust me, feed the form the adress Prins Hendrikstraat 170, Breda, NL, hit 'Go' and see for yourself. Or go to my GoogleMaps and click on 'A Star Born?

Any clues anybody? My guess: it's the sun reflecting on a glass car roof. But then again: there must be heaps of stars like this in cities where the sun shone when the satelltite or the picture planes passed over. Maybe caused by a glitch in the Aerodata (who does the Dutch pictures) or the Google cameras and/or software.

 Posted: October 23, 2006, 05:05 PM | Comments (0) |

October 22, 2006

Sweet Little Sixteen

Saturday night Oktober 21, 2006, @ Cafe De Beyerd in Breda, during the 32nd Belgian Beer Week: The Cyranose Live. Sound was a little bit to much for the poor Canon Ixus, but look and listen . . .

 Posted: October 22, 2006, 02:09 PM | Comments (0) |

October 20, 2006

Big fun: Google Maps API

Having big fun playing with the Google Maps API! Got two keys, one for myself, one for the newspaper portal I'm working for, and constructed some pages.

The first one integrated in an iFrame in the newspaper website, and two pages so far for myself, checking out what's possible - and that's a bloody lot. So far I've produced a map with navigation in the side bar, and a second one to get the Geocodes you need for the navigation URL's in the side bar of the first one.

They both look nice now, linking to each other. More work to be done, though. The goal might be to combine all functions in one big map, but I'm not sure I'd like to do that, maybe better to keep it this way. But first I have to learn how to make the pop up's look nicer, maybe use my own icon placemarks, how to integrate the 'to here' and 'from here' directions into the pop-ups.

There's a pretty comprehensive Google Maps API Documentation manual at Google, and I made the first Map at the newspaper based on that manual.

The second and the third map I couldn't have done without the great Google Maps API Tutorial from Mike Williams.

 Posted: October 20, 2006, 12:57 PM | Comments (5) |

October 19, 2006

Bye bye house

No words . . .

 Posted: October 19, 2006, 09:56 AM | Comments (0) |

October 17, 2006

Start (video) blogging, now!

Wanna see how two twenty somethings feel who just cashed a cool 700 million each? Check out this YouTube video. It shows the interview held on a San Francisco Street, minutes after YouTube, owned by Chad Hurley (29) and Steve Chen (28), is acquired by Google, that paid 1.65 billion in shares. No wonder the two video wonder boys are behaving like they're leaving a Dutch coffee shop, where one can legally enjoy a big joint.

They not only cashed, they also will receive a nice salary, because they start working for Google, while some small change - 300 mil - goes to the investor who smelled in time what was going to happen to video and Internet.

Where YouTube was a dubious, uncertain platform to build upon, I think Google video is a more stable base that bloggers or digital publishers can use without any investment, bind or confer. All you need is some kind of video camera, upload, ready and done.

It probably won't take long before Google will start every video with ten or so commercial seconds, like the model that a lot of video providers are using already.

We do it on our corporate portal, and while some visitors seem to be used to it, I myself have to be very, very curious, before I accept fifteen appetizer seconds.

Anyway, the very moment your video is uploaded tot YouTube or Google Video, you can embed a link on your own blog or website, where you can surround them with your own advertisements. Or put Google ads next to them, so that your free video host is making some money - and you too.

All to good to be true? Google the web and you will find business models that explain how to make money on the web with a number of free Google products. High in the top ten of working case a smart couple - he does the website, she does the CRM calls - who make some 300,000, a month that is, bye means of Google AdSense.

Keep Googling and you will find a picture of another one proudly showing his latest monthly mega check.

It even isn't a hoax. Start blogging, now!

 Posted: October 17, 2006, 11:22 AM | Comments (0) |

October 12, 2006

More Google News

I've noted yesterday that Writely was definitely gone, merged with Spreadsheets into Google Documents & Spreadsheets, in which this post is written.

Late yesterday night (CET) a new little linkie when I logged into Google Groups: 'view in Google Beta'.

Click and see how the GoogleGroups interface soon will be looking - maybe this switch is definitely too while I'm writing this - like the recently made over RSS reader.

Wait folks, cause that's not all there is today . . .

Next star on the Google heaven: another little link this morning in Documents & Spreadsheets: Photo.

It leads tot picasaweb.google.com. A web that was already there for a couple of months, but now they've started to integrate it into other services like my personalized Google Start Page, and probably more of the many other Google applications I'm using right now.

On top of every possible tap or page - when logged in - in Google Search, in Gmail, in Calendar, in Photos, in Docs & Spreadsheets, in Groups, in all my services are links to - well, you guess it - Google Search, Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Docs & Spreadsheets, Groups, in all my services. The waiting for Google Office can't be long anymore.

Another new thing is a Picasa up loader for my Mac.

Uploading top Picasaweb could already be done from a Mac, cause in the latest iPhoto sits a little button 'Picasa upload. But as form today there's a beautiful new app for the Mac. All you have to do is click and drag abunch of pictures form a Finder window into another window and you're done and published on Pcasaweb..

Just like I did with Helenes new Black Puppy

 Posted: October 12, 2006, 03:36 PM | Comments (0) |

October 11, 2006

Docs & Spreadsheets: almost Google Office

It's almost - just not yet - Google Office: when I logged into my Google Account ten minutes ago, and clicked my way into Writely, something new appeared: Google Documents.

While some Redmond lackeys start collecting old chairs for Steve Ballmer and then duck for cover, Google has integrated Writely and Spreadsheets into - well- Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Earlier this morning I was working in the 'old' Writely, noticing nothing new, but now the green and yellow colors are gone, and the new application is dressed in the familiar Google light blue. Just wondering how long it will take until YouTube changes logo and color . . . .

Apart from the integration there are some new features, and of course some improvements. I'll report on them later.

Check out: What's new in Google Docs & Spreadsheets?

 Posted: October 11, 2006, 11:43 AM | Comments (0) |

October 06, 2006

Mail: so yesterday?

Be warned, those who just completed an e-mail course for seniors; better stop reading at the end of this sentence. Because e-mail is tired, not wired, so outdated, has-been, redundant. E-mail is not cool, no more, Internet youth (is there youth somewhere that doesn't use Internet?) use e-mail for only thing: to communicate with old people.

Youth rather use - apart from mobile phone text messaging - something form the broad spectrum of different ways of chat serving, like Windows Live Messenger, MSN, GoogleTalk, or one of the numerous chat servers on the Internet, or somewhere in some online community.

in Dutch at @ DutchCowboys

According to an analysis on the Ars Technica website, that made headlines last week in media all over the web, it's not only the youngest generations ofInternet users. This new trend also causes some problems on universities; student start missing announcements or are breaking deadlines because they are not using e-mail anymore.

Being a journalist myself I know some of us are more than happy to produce intriguing headlines that invite reading their articles. Worse; that some - not all - journos produce conclusions that make the researchers they are writing about, scratch their heads. When you read - easy inInternet times - the original research yourself, you can make your own conclusion.

In this case it is true that 8 percent less of American teenagers are indeed using no more e-mail, but almost 90 percent is still using mail.

While we'll see how this sinking curve will be developing, it's also a matter of the way you look at things. I am communicating all day, but very rarely I use GoogleTalk, actually only when another Gtalker pops up on one of my screens. Matter of looking at things: if you mail a remark to somebody else on line, and that somebody else replies a line or two, and we keep doing that for a while, one might says a chat session is functioning. The technique, the protocol in use may be a little bit different, but the users experience is exactly the same.

By the way: if you save a GoogleTalk session, and you open it some time later to find out what the hack you were chatting - sorry, mailing - about, it's just the same as opening an old e-mail thread. With all the questions and answers, mails and replies. It may be tired and outdated, I'm sure I'll be using my Gmail for quite some time to come.

 Posted: October 06, 2006, 05:10 PM | Comments (0) |

Beatles live on Swedish tv, 1963

Little jewel, found on GoogleVideo. So you young guys want to know how good those The Beatles really were, live on stage?

Check out for yourself: a rare video of the Beatles in Stockholm, 1963. live on Swedish television. Grrrrreat!

 Posted: October 06, 2006, 12:05 PM | Comments (0) |

October 03, 2006

Blue Oyster Spiral Fractal Zoom

No matter how deep you go, there's always more. According to maker Dave Klimann this movie took quite a few days to calculate in 1993.

'When i first made a poster of ... all » the image i call 'blue oyster spiral', which is a zoom at about the 100 Billion X magnification level inside the Mandelbrot Fractal, it took 34 computers 3 days to render it. But today, the same poster can be rendered on one typical PC in just a few hours'.

 Posted: October 03, 2006, 11:28 AM | Comments (0) |