Google wishes you Happy Holidays
Google wishes you Happy Holidays.
You can see the logos unfold on the homepage or here.
Happy Holidays! 
Google Voice User? Get The Quick Reference Card
If you’re a Google Voice user like me, you’ll be glad to print out this quick reference card that gives you all the menu options when you call the service to listen to voicemail or change settings, or receive calls.
For example, when you receive a call with Google Voice you can hear who’s calling before you answer. Hit 1 to answer the call, or hit 2 to send them to voicemail. Easy to remember. But you can also hit 3 to send them to voicemail and listen in. Or 4 to answer the call and record it. Four is too many things for me to remember, which is why I’m printing this out and putting it in my wallet.
Thanks for CoolGeex for creating this!
City of Los Angeles Goes Google for $7.2 Million
It looks like those Going Google billboards are actually good for something, as the Los Angeles’ city council has just unanimously approved a Google Apps deal worth $7.2 million.
According to CNET, LA would become one of the largest government agencies, outside the District of Columbia, to make the switch to using hosted Google email and application services.
However, security concerns over storing information in the cloud did factor into the process and have yet to be 100% aleviated. Apparently the deal hinges around an agreement with Computer Sciences Corp, a contractor who would need to agree to pay a penalty should there be a security breach.
If the deal does go through it would be quite the coup for Google and their Going Google campaign. With both the US Government supporting the initiative and the city of Los Angeles joining the Google team, Google is building up an arsenal of large and impressive customers that should make it easier to attract more top dollar enterprise clients.
Image from Peter Kaminski on Flickr.
via City of Los Angeles Goes Google for $7.2 Million.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6d29fd5a-280a-4336-abd5-0fb9b4fa84db)
Google Acquires reCAPTCHA
I think this is great news. Google can truly take this service to the next level, and even improve upon it to not only provide a better, more available and robust service but also to improve other technologies along the way.
You know those boxes with funky looking letters that are becoming increasingly common on website registration forms, or on Facebook Pages when you want to post an update? They’re called captchas and they’re used primarily to deter spammers and bots.
One of the biggest providers of the technology is a company called reCAPTCHA, and now, Google owns them. The search giant just announced on their blog that they’re buying reCAPTCHA, which is used on more than 100,000 websites worldwide.
Why exactly does Google want to own this technology? For starters, reCAPTCHA has a unique solution. As Google describes:
“But there’s a twist — the words in many of the CAPTCHAs provided by reCAPTCHA come from scanned archival newspapers and old books. Computers find it hard to recognize these words because the ink and paper have degraded over time, but by typing them in as a CAPTCHA, crowds teach computers to read the scanned text.”
And where does that fit within the Google portfolio of products? Google Books. The company continues:
“This technology also powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search. Having the text version of documents is important because plain text can be searched, easily rendered on mobile devices and displayed to visually impaired users. So we’ll be applying the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve our books and newspaper scanning process.”
In other words, those 100,000+ captcha forms are now Google-powered, with the data being used to improve Google’s ability to digitize old books and newspapers to make them Web searchable. It makes a lot of sense, and gives Google yet another strategic advantage over would-be competitors.
via Google Acquires reCAPTCHA.
Original post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-computers-to-read-google.html
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3e20fba0-b034-4208-bdc7-ba2ef988dfa8)
Google Launches a New Way to Read the News
Is reading online news broken? Google (Google) seems to think so as they just launched Google Fast Flip, a Google Labs experiment that’s designed to help you flip through news online as fast as you would if you were holding a print magazine or paper.
Fast Flip is essentially just a funky way to flip through articles from three dozen Google partners including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fast Company. Partners share in advertising revenue generated through the labs experiment.
With Fast Flip you can flip through snapshots of the day’s popular news, drill into specific sections and topics, or narrow stories by publisher source. Once you select a story, you can view the article in its totality and use the arrows to flip to the previous or next story.
Click to continue reading "Google Launches a New Way to Read the News"
Go straight to Post
Google sets new target: Microsoft Office
We all know that Microsoft and Google have recently declared a cold war. It's true; Google's talking about a Chrome OS, Microsoft plans to make the next Office suite web based, then Microsoft's deal with Yahoo, and then... Google launches a campaign, intelligently called "Going Google," to make things only more interesting. The new campaign has 1 Microsoft product in cross hairs: Microsoft Office.
The campaign will feature a series of advertisements focused around why some 3,000 organizations are "Going Google" every day. The most interesting part of this campaign, however, is the billboards that will be displayed in 4 locations. They will be updated every day for a month describing why those 3,000 organizations have decided to switch to Google Apps.
Click to continue reading "Google sets new target: Microsoft Office"
Go straight to Post
FCC’s getting involved about Apple/AT&T’s rejection of Google Voice app
I find this dispute to be quite humorous. If you haven't read my first blog post on the matter, I suggest you head over and check it out. However, in brief, the official Google Voice app as well as others like it were all removed from Apple's App Store, claiming that they "duplicated" features already available on the phone; their way of saying, "But AT&T will loose money! So will we!" And just when I thought the story couldn't get any better, AT&T, Apple, and Google get letters from the FCC regarding the removal of the Google Voice app.
Jason Kincaid has posted all 3 letters for your viewing pleasure.
Google Voice is an amazing service that allows users to use get 1 (free) phone number and have it ring all of your other phones. The idea is to have 1 number tied to you, instead of your work, home, and cell. It offers free, unlimited text messaging and some very inexpensive international calling rates. Best of all, the service is entirely free, and is very convenient and easy to use.
[Source: TechCrunch.com]
Apple bans Google Voice from App Store
It's true: Apple has banned Google Voice from its App Store. I see this as a huge mistake for Apple, as many customers are finding that the convenience of Google Voice is hard to imagine not having anymore. Online sources are claiming this is attributable to AT&T. You can read more from here.
Google Voice
I finally got my Google Voice invitation a few weeks ago, and I've had time to test it quite a bit since I got it. I must say that its features are quite awesome, and that the service itself can't be beat (especially when you consider the price: free).
In case you haven't heard of Google Voice, take a gander at this video:
Remember: Google Voice is free and currently, there are no advertisements. Everything is as you would expect from Google, flawless. It's in a private beta right now, so be sure to sign up for an invitation.
Google drops ‘beta’ tag from Google Apps products (Gmail, Google Docs, etc.)
After 5 years of officially being in 'beta', the company finally seems to have dropped this tag (officially) from the products in their Google Apps suite. Now all of the companies that feared using the products (Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Talk) because of that one little word (which has become meaningless online; although for Google, it had more internal meaning than anything) may now enjoy the array of benefits that you can only find at Google.
Over 1.75 billion businesses are currently using Google Apps, according to Google. Also, Google has made it clear that they will "continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there's a small "beta" beneath the logo".
Read the original article at Google's Official Blog.
Of course, if you happened to enjoy seeing that little Beta tag, Google feels for you! They've included a labs tool entitled "Back to Beta" which is described as "Soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Gmail logo." Be sure to enable that to make the transition on your own terms 
Heh.
Recent Posts
- Sir Ken Robinson Lecture
- Next Project: MMORPG Development
- Music: When They Came For Us by Shiny Toy Guns
- The iPad…
- Switching to Media Temple
Latest Projects
- Natalie Tran [dot] me This is a Natalie Tran Fansite that I have put together. I’m still waiting to hear from Natalie about it, but until then, it’s a great place to keep up with Natalie.
- Robin Tabari Official fansite of Robin Tabari, “a 23-year-old that is determined to give it his best shot at making quality music, spending hours on end, each and everyday to provide you simply with a smile and some tasteful sounds.”
Archives
- August 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009