The press have gone wild over the Google operating system announcement.
Google gets set to shatter Windows’ dominance
Google’s operating system escalates Microsoft duel
etc.
I don’t think so. This is another Linux distribution. There are hundreds of these including Ubuntu (the hot distro du jour), Moblin from Intel, Google’s own Android and for that matter the Apple Mac Operating system which is built on Linux.
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I got a call the other day from www.meettheboss.com a business social network. I had been recommended by the CEO of HSBC or some such nonsense and I could participate in some sort of program and get in front of the creme de la creme of decision makers yada yada I kept on asking ‘how much’ then there was yada yada ‘how much’. £9,000. I put the phone down.
I have signed up as a punter and checked the launch press release. Apparently it is a business social network aimed at the finance industry launched last summer. It looks very nice (expensive – allegedly $50million – HOW MUCH!!!).
There is no evidence that the members are finance industry people, so I guess that objective fell by the wayside fairly quickly. The USP is that there is a two-tier system with ‘C’ level executives in a different class from us punters. From the press release:
“These executives are protected and this is what is missing from any other business networks out there – they don’t have the safety and security of being in a safe environment with peers and the top 10 global financial services organisations in the world don’t have the ability to network within the C level, and we’ve created a safe platform for them to do this.”
Now I don’t see the CEO of anyone significant spending time at his computer networking with other CEOs via some social networking site. I just don’t see it. These are important busy people, if they want to network with someone they get their secretary to fix lunch.
The discussion forum got six posts/comments in the last 4 business days so it is not eactly a hive of activity.
Compared to a really useful facility like Linkedin I somehow don’t see this one making it. But we will see in due course.
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Nvidia just spoke on netbook operating systems for ARM based systems and they like … Windows CE. They prefer it because it better suited to a netbook than ..Android.
Repeat after me 100 times. A netbook is not a mobile phone. A netbook is not a mobile phone. A netbook is not a mobile phone. A netbook is not a mobile phone.
Do these guys know nothing about computers and what they are used for. Do they really think that the only use for these gadgets will only be used for browsing. Because that is pretty much all these toy operating systems are capable of.
I dunno – I dispair. Maybe depressingly they are right.
Just because the first unix-based netbooks were a bit of a snafu it doesn’t mean that they should be written off. Unix is the natural operating system for an ARM netbook. No question. If it goes the other way I will stick my head in a bucket.
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My guess is that Netbooks will eventually home in on a solid state drive and Unix as the ideal combination. If you had such a device today with a reasonable processor how long would it take you to boot up and load firefox?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GKohxZHNg4&feature=player_embedded
22 seconds!
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The guys in Googlewho brought you Google maps have been working on something just as revolutionary. A complete rethink of he email concept. The email is out, the ‘wave’ is in.
A wave is a bit like a cross between an email, a shared document and a forum post. Everyone who ‘receives’ the wave looks at the same document. Anyone on that recipient list can add to it, much as you would add comments to an email and then ‘reply-all’ to update everyone. The big difference is that there is only one copy of the wave and everyone is looking at the same thing. So when you update the wave everyone sees your update – in real time to it replaces email and messenger.
When you add to a wave you are clearly identified, and you can add semi-private updates. You can even replay the wave and see the additions made in the order they were added.
Anyone who sees the presentation at http://wave.google.comis going to see how much better this all works than regular email. There are other clever things like dragging and dropping images, a smart API, spell checker that seems to be more intelligent than most, real-time translation into other languages, a serious API and so on… However there are few issues:
During the presentation their network went down. No network no wave. However Google Gears has the possibility of creating local copies of things like this so this may not be such a big issue.
This is a hosted application and no corporate is going to allow its precious data to be held or even accessed externally. So email is likely to remain. Is there going to be a clever way of integrating wave with email? My brain hurts when I try and figure that out.
This is an exciting product. Forget messenger applications because this one is messnger on steroids. Will it replace email? I doubt it – sadly.
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Here is a site I came acrosss by change. A periodic table of visualisation methods.
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
The periodic table of elements lists the elements in nature and they show elements properties are repetative. I am not sure this table does exactly show that for visualisation methods, but if you need to make numbers or concepts understandable then these examples may help.
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A new version of bluetooth was launched last month. It will be a while before we see products in the shops of course. It uses the same communications protocol as your wi fi, so Bluetooth 3 will be much faster than version 2 and can be used for bulk transfers of data or for video. It will allow for mobile phones and for that matter netbooks to interface wirelessly with a wider range of external devices – see this Nokia video to se how this might work.
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David Pogue is writing a book. Well actually he is not writing the book as such, he is compiling it from twitter posts. It actually sounds quite feasible.
Post a tweet and if included you get a copy of the book.
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Pay Per Tweet was an April Fool joke only a year ago. Now it is a business. Isn’t the Internet wunnerful.
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With a blindingly simple idea Magpie are doing something with twitter, that twitter are not – making money.
Sign up with them, and they insert an ad in your twitter stream – say 1 in 10. You choose the frequency and get paid something. They are a bit vague about how much.
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