Google Nexus One vs Apple iPhone 3Gs

An informative video by Gadget Video Reviews that compares Google’s new phone (manufactured by HTC) with the iPhone. Straight, to-the-point, and fills you in with what you’re really after.

Although you’ll never be able to fully judge until you get your hands on one of Google’s new boys, it is useful to have a broad idea. The one aspect that I am particularly concerned about is the touch screen of the Nexus One. If it cannot match the intuitive scrolling of its Californian counterpart, then Google might have a bit of work to do before it can grab a market share of any significance.

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Top 10 Tech Stories of 2009

SoldierKnowsBest put together a casual video talking about the 10 breakthroughs to remember from 2009. It is obviously quite bias towards Apple as well as the main-stream companies, so it is best to view it as a recap of the products that made the biggest buzz in the consumer technology market in the last year.

Looking forward to the video showcasing the best open-source projects of 2009. Anyone?

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Google’s 10 to the 100

Love’em or hate’em, we must not take anything away from Google’s creativity and innovation. One of the latest of which establishing an unprecedented approach to social development via the one and only: the World Wide Web. Project 10 to the 100 is a $10 million grant that Google will be handing to the chosen project related to development anywhere across the globe. After accepting applications and stacking over 150,000 applicants’ hopes and dreams with ideas on different projects, Google narrowed down the candidates to the finalists where only one will rise as the winner of the generous grant from the Californian giants.

How is the candidate chosen? This is where the community of the web comes in, and Google have cleverly taken advantage: Your vote. Every person can go on the website, read about every project, and then vote of whichever he or she has most faith in. Accordingly, the search engine pioneers will shell out a big tenner and make the project a reality. Not only have they used the web to announce their grant and facilitate communication with the different candidates, they have taken it a step further by allowing the true owners of the internet, the users, to use their power and indicate where the money will be heading. Yet another example of the immense power of the web, and how it can play a vital part in every single field across the planet. The trick is to give people the power they deserve, and Google, in this particular case, have done precisely that.

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Bing vs Google

Last week, I posted a video that took a humorous approach to the search engine battle between the California giants, and then new kid on the block, Bing. Interestingly, I came across this website that does a very simple move to give you the best of both worlds, at the same time. Just like how some people would argue that a portion of contemporary art is no more than a very basic idea that the artist came up with first, Bing vs Google is something for which its creator deserves credit simply because he came up with the idea before anyone else, and brought it to us, the users, to take advantage of.

One field, two search engines

Instead of opening two separate tabs to test out the two main search engines in competition right now, you can now view the results from both worlds, by the same click, and in the same window:

Bing vs Google, at the same time

Of course, on a small screen, it wouldn’t be too useful, but who has anything smaller than a 15.4″ with at least 1280 pixels in width? Viewing them side-by-side is as fair as you can get. And even if you insist on using one of them and not the other, it might be good practice to start off with Bing vs Google to make an accurate judgment first. And let’s not forget that there’s always Ask, Yahoo!, and a few others.

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Can You Compete with Google Search?

This is a short video by CollegeHumor that uses sarcasm to point out the possible lack of competition for the Google search engine:

Microsoft launched Bing in an attempt to make life difficult for Google. Not surprisingly, it is not working out so well, at least not at the moment. The main problem is that the search engine boom has been almost exclusively handed to Google, and they wasted no time in taking advantage. In fact, the word “search” has seemed to have disappeared from the English/Tech language, and users worldwide are referring to the daily process as “Googling”. That results in a clear advantage in Google’s favor leaving very little room for maneuver, especially with the regular users’ lack of interest in exploring the different options -- people just want to get to what they’re looking for in the quickest and easiest manner. Consequently, you might come across those who advocate the phrase “I love Google!”, as oppose to “I love the Internet”, giving credit to the technology giants for the actual content offered via the Web, not just the process of finding it.

Filtering the huge majority of search queries via a single search engine can be very dangerous, as it facilitates the process of censorship. Potentially, Google could have the power of controlling what is crawled and visible in the results, and what stay in the dark. Either way, as users of the information super highway, we can always benefit from more competition. Let’s hope the power remains where it belongs: With the people.

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What We Know About Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome logo

On the 7th of July, technology giants Google announced that they will release their own Operating System late 2010. It seems like it was nothing more than the worst kept secret of recent times, as there is very little known about it, and nothing will become clear until we near its release in a year’s time.

Having said that, there has been a bit of talk, and this article by Jason Hiner of TechRepublic gives an excellent explanation of what we know about the new OS, and its importance to us (or lack of).

In summary, Google will release an Operating System, like Windows and Mac OS, that is based on the Linux kernal. There are currently hundreds of different Linux distributions available, all free and open-source. Normally, each distro offers something different, or is geared towards a certain audience. In the case of Chrome OS, Google aims to create a very light and fast OS that is targeting netbooks, and is based on the fact that its users do almost everything on the Internet. This means that people will use remote servers to store their data (therefore no need for back-up), and web applications for their daily tasks (meaning less need for any applications to be installed on the local machine).

At the moment it is way too early to tell how successful this project is going to be. But one thing is for sure, and it’s that the consumers can always use more competition, and a new OS (it could be argued that it’s no more than a new distro, but it is still marketed as a new OS) would encourage Microsoft and Apple to constantly improve. Moreover, it could be a point of enthusiasm for Linux-supporters, as it is potentially the entrance to the Linux globe for regular users world-wide.

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Piwik: Open Source Web Analytics

The Piwik Analytics' Logo

More and more web applications are being made available for download for users to place on their own server. One of the latest products of the beautiful open-source globe is Piwik: an online application that brings you all of the detailed statistics regarding your website’s visitors. Tracking the visitors to a given website is a crucial measurement of success/failure, and is the base of most of the decisions that are made.

While there are a number of web applications that can provide you with such information, Piwik is complete free and open-source. More importantly, it is hosted on your own server, giving you complete control, and freedom to alter however you see fit.

The Piwik Dashboard

For starters, the Ajax-driven dashboard is very intuitive and easy to use. You can select which widgets you want to see on the first page, and in what order. That’s because the Piwik team have made the realization that analytics’ users would want to access the admin panel very frequently, but would rarely go after small, relatively-insignificant details. That, within itself, is a demonstration of how the level of usability of open-source products is always superior to commercial counterparts – with so many volunteers, you’re bound to have something that pleases everyone.

Moreover, after the unprecedented success of the Firefox extensions’ concept, Piwik is developed to allow for plugins built by the community, meaning that the sky is the limit, as far as the features are concerned. The script ships with some of the basic plugins that you would be using.

Some of the unique features include the ability to see the Outlinks, showing how the visitors exited the websites, as well as the Downloads, which reveals the files that the users have downloaded off your website. Not to mention an extensive referrers’ section that indicates whether the users arrived via direct entry, another website, or a search engine (and in all three cases, giving all of the associated details).

Why use Piwik and not Google Analytics?

Many administrators rely on Google Analytics for visitors’ statistics, but Piwik’s edge is very clear:

1. Piwik is free and open-source, Google have the right to go commercial when they feel like it
2. Piwik is hosted on your server, and it’s not going anywhere. While Google can start bombarding you with ads if they feel like it, or limit your access
3. It’s important to keep your statistics private. When Google know everything there is about your visitors and have the right to use that information. They can shape the AdSense market, because they’ll know what people are looking for, and can therefore control pricing, making everyone pay more for keywords. However, when it’s on your server, Google have less control over ad pricing
4. Piwik is a lot easier to use, a lot more light-weight. More importantly, the future is a lot brighter, thanks to the plugins’ infrastructure.

Using Piwik is extremely easy. Just go to http://piwik.org, download the latest version, upload it to a directory on your server (for example: www.yourwebsite.com/piwik), point your browser to that directoy, and follow the on-screen instructions. You will need PHP and MySQL on your server, which are available in 99% of all hosts. After that, copy the code snippet into all of the pages of your website, and watch the magic.

If you’re using WordPress, install Piwik and use the WP-Piwik plugin that automatically places a valid code in all parts of the website.

We are now moving out of the “open-source alternative” era, and into the “an obviously better choice, regardless of the fact that it’s open-source” realm.

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The Great Firewall of China

Seemingly not satisfied with censoring major websites like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia, the Chinese government has ordered all PCs sold in the country to have a pre-configured software installed that would block all websites with pornographic content or language. Starting Juy 1st, anyone purchasing a new PC will have his hands tied, thanks to “Green Dam Youth Escort”, the latest technology that the Chinese government has been working on for years. In fact, they have deployed a special “Internet Police” body of more than 30,000 officers to ensure fluidity and compliance with orders.

China's Internet censored

Very few people would be willing to make a big fuss about the censorship of adult content, for various reasons. Firstly, many conservative families would actually like to prevent their children from accessing disturbing content. Secondly, no one would be proud of defending pornography, that would say many things about you that you wouldn’t like people to think. Moreover, with so many problems and human rights’ violations throughout the People’s Republic of China and beyond, there are more important things to worry about (such as basic daily needs), and there have been too many failures (According to Amnesty International, China has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world), so you wouldn’t want to mess with the authorities.

However, this is not an issue of pornography, it’s much bigger than that. The fact that the Chinese government can track the sites visited by every single person, and the fact that they now have the ability to censor any website whatsoever, makes the only free method of communication ever to exist almost completely impotent. It is a clear attempt to isolate the Chinese population from accessing information from the rest of the planet, and this will inevitably lead to dire consequences. While many governments are not fully aware of the power that the people posses thanks to the Internet, the Chinese authorities have done their homework and are taking all of the necessary measures to ensure totalitarianism.

What many do not realize, however, is that the Chinese government would’ve never succeeded in censoring and filtering internet access if it wasn’t for the helping hands from some of the American corporations. Google, for one, is a prime example of a company that claims to follow a certain philosophy, but acts hypocritically. Thus, while Google.com is censored, Google.cn is publicly accessible throughout mainland China. That is because Google were kind enough to offer the service of providing the Chinese with a stripped-down, filtered version of the original search engine.

As stubborn as they may be, there is very little the Chinese government can do to maintain the inevtiable explansion of the web. Sooner or later, the leackage cracks will be to big to handle, and the power will be restored to the real owners: the people.

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