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Google Instant: A Fundamental Shift in Search
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 27 min ago
Marissa Mayer, Google’s top search executive, announced a “fundamental shift” in how search operates with the launch of Google Instant at a press event in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Google Instant still looks like the search engine’s home page people are accustomed to, but the results begin streaming in real time as a user starts typing out a search. When a user types in “SFM,” a search result for SFMOMA — the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the event is being held — appears before the full search query is even typed.
A Google engineer later showed search results for local weather appearing after typing just the letter “W”.
Mayer said Google has spent a lot of time optimizing search on Google’s end — bringing it down to about 300 miliseconds on Google’s server — and network time — how fast individual internet connections are and how they affect the speed of the search.
But even with optimizing those, a search still takes around 25 seconds, and all that focus is only on around one of the 25 seconds, Mayer said. So, Google has been focusing on how to optimize the “physical” aspects of search — the typing and the thinking that a user does when searching. She said she expects users to save anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds per search.
“We want to make search fast, fun and interactive,” Mayer said.
Google Instant will be rolling out starting today for Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 8. The service will roll out internationally throughout the week.
You can find a demo of the service below.
Companies: Google
People: Marissa Mayer
Categories: Technology
Solaria Raises $65 Million, Beating Its Goal by $20 Million
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 37 min ago
High-efficiency solar panel maker Solaria announced today they have raised $65 million in series D financing, $20 million more than its original target.
Solaria’s success flies in the face of recent speculation that the sun is setting for solar venture capitalism — and is another example of how investors are favoring crystalline silicon panels, which Solaria makes, over thin-film silicon makers. The company also bagged $45 million in a May round of financing.
A number of solar players such as MiaSolé and Nanosolar bet on the trend of less silicon use when silicon prices were high, and banked on thin-film modules that are cheaper to make but have less efficiency than crystalline silicon modules. But as silicon prices have since dropped, those companies have struggled to get financing. In fact, Applied Materials dropped out of the thin-film business altogether in July, though Oerlikon stays firmly in the game with their announcement yesterday of a cheaper, more efficient line of thin-film products.
Solaria plans to use its new influx of cash to increase availability of their patented modules, which are currently available in North America, Europe and Asia. The new financing includes $10 million set aside for a new growth loan facility.
The company’s appeal lies in its technology, which can cut capital expenditure dramatically for solar module manufacturing. Its solar modules are built for use in tracking systems, which follow the sun’s movement across the sky to maximize absorption and are used in large-scale solar projects by industrial companies and utilities.
Solaria’s modules also pack a powerful punch thanks to its optical concentrators, which absorb more sunlight and can increase output by up to 30 percent.
The company has high-profile backers such as CMEA Capital, which led this round of financing along with DBL Investors. It signed on new investors in this round – Adams Street partners, Cycad Group and Western Technologies.
Other investors include Sigma Partners, NGEN Partners, Mitsui Ventures and Savitr Capital and EnXco.
Companies: Adams Street Partners, CMEA Capital, Cycad Group, Dbl Investors, EnXco, Miasole, Mitsui Ventures, NanoSolar, NGEN Partners, Savitr Capital, Sigma Partners, Solaria, Western Technologies
Categories: Technology
RIM Patents 'Adaptive' Billboards for Delivering Ads Based on Traffic
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 47 min ago
RIM, the company behind Blackberry smartphones, is getting into the smart billboard business, according to two patent applications it filed recently. But what would a smartphone maker and roadside advertising have in common? It could be a new way to serve up "adaptive" advertising according to data gathered from nearby Blackberry users.
According to mobile-focused blog Unwired View, the innovation comes in the form of using nearby phones to measure traffic speed and density and then adapting a billboard's content accordingly.
When traffic is moving fast and drivers have no time to pay attention to billboards, or there's a dense crowd on the street so you are distracted and less likely to pay attention, the billboard may just blast a huge logo and slogan of the advertiser at you, to catch any peripheral attention it can get. When traffic slows down in a jam, and you are sitting bored at the wheel waiting for a car in front to move the next few meters, grateful for any distraction, the same billboard will give you a detailed information about the service, prices, benefits and stuff.The two separate patents are for "Adaptive roadside billboard system and related methods" and "Adaptive pedestrian billboard system and related methods"; both are described as having a storage system that could retain a number of different messages for different speeds and traffic densities. Beyond the level of detail involved, such a system could also be used to offer interaction opportunities when density is high and speed is low (such as in a traffic jam).
The next step, of course, is for billboards to begin collecting more personal information than simply crowd-aggregated data - such as the types of cars being driven - to cater advertising more specifically to the people present. That same next step, however, treads on thinner ice in regards to privacy than simply the density and speed of traffic, which is already used by systems such as Google Maps to provide traffic analysis.
Categories: Technology
What It Means: Google, Yahoo Come Together With OpenID
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 47 min ago
Google has announced that Yahoo users will now be able to quickly and easily sign up for Google products using their Yahoo email address. The feature, according to some in the industry, will be a boon for Google and OpenID, the Internet standard behind the feature. But what benefit does this provide for Yahoo?
Will making it easier for Yahoo users to sign in to Google - a direct competitor - draw users away from the portal, search and mail provider, or will it help create an overall better user experience? According to Yahoo, making a process that users were already engaged in simpler will provide a better user experience and keep them interested in one of its most solid products - Yahoo Mail.
According to Kaliya Hamlin of IdentityWoman.net, the step is a big one for OpenID.
"People have been asking FOREVER when are the big web portals actually going to accept other people's OpenIDs. This a significant step by Google to become a relying party," Hamlin told us today.
Scott Kveton, co-founder of the OpenID Foundation, agreed that it was "a big step forward for making OpenID that much easier to use".
"Making it easier to have Google and Yahoo work together is great for Google," said Kveton, but he questioned the advantage for Yahoo. He noted that "making it easier to on-board users into Google via their email accounts means being able to suck in the social graph."
We asked Eran Hammer-Lahav, an Open Web advocate for Yahoo, about the feature, and he told us that it had been in some form of discussion for over two years and would provide a better user experience for Yahoo's users.
"We don't try to lock our users in any way," said Hammer-Lahav. "We want them to have a better Web experience no matter what site they are on, just by being a Yahoo user. Yahoo is not in the business of locking users to only use its services, especially when the Web is getting so much more distributed and social."
Hammer-Lahav told us that Yahoo believes its mail product is strong enough to keep users happy (and loyal), as evidenced by when Yahoo was one of the first email providers to provide address book mobility. When we asked if Yahoo would be offering the same sort of feature, he explained that there weren't many Yahoo products that required email sign-ins, but the company is adding OpenID support for activities like adding comments, which do require full account sign-ins. In this case, Google added this functionality, he explained, because Yahoo email account holders make up a large percentage of the email market and those trying to create Google accounts.
In the end, that may be just it - the simple fact that users will be drawn to Google's growing arsenal of Web tools, from Google Docs to Voice to AdWords, and it's better to keep what business you can rather than have your users abandon your product completely.
Categories: Technology
Police in 14 Countries Raid File-Sharing Hosts And Hit Close to Wikileaks
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 47 min ago
Authorities cracked down on file-sharing sites across Europe yesterday in a major operation two years in the making, Swedish officials told media.
The raid is getting special attention because one target in Stockholm is best known for hosting part of Wikileaks.org, the site where whistle-blowers have leaked highly sensitive documents from governments across the world. But authorities said the real target was not Wikileaks, but the highly-active pirate network known as The Scene or Warez Scene, which encompasses 48 sites.
Seven locations were raided in Sweden, according to the file-sharing news site Torrent Freak, including a university. Raids were also reportedly carried out in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Czech Republic, Hungary and Belgium, where the request originated.
Several torrent sites including Pirate Bay were down for users in some countries today.
Five policemen showed up yesterday morning at PRQ, the company that in part hosts Wikileaks, and asked about two IP addresses used in 2009. The company handed over email addresses associated with the IP addresses, which are the only records it keeps on its clients. No servers or computers were confiscated, the company said.
The raid comes as Wikileaks is preparing to release 15,000 classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, which the U.S. government is anxious to prevent. PRQ denied that Wikileaks was the subject of the raid, and Wikileaks has not made any statement yet.
"The raid was about the usual file-sharing crack-down, which they have each year, so not directed directly against PRQ or its customers," PRQ said in an email to customers.
The extent and precise targeting of the raid suggest that it was a dedicated effort to crack down on piracy. The fact that one of Wikileaks' hosts was targeted could be a coincidence because Wikileaks and file-sharing sites have similar requirements: security and bravery in the face of international law enforcement.
But stranger conspiracy theories regarding Wikileaks have been proposed. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is claiming rape charges filed against him in Sweden are part of a smear campaign orchestrated by the U.S. government.
What do you think - was Wikileaks a target here?
Categories: Technology
Google CEO: “Fast Is About to Get Faster”
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 47 min ago
A cryptic Tweet by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt might hold some clues as to what to expect from today’s Google presentation in San Francisco.
Schmidt announced yesterday that Google was going to make a push into automated searches that dynamically provide results of what readers might want to see, not just what they are searching for. Based on Schmidt’s Tweet, it’s possible the announcement by Google today in San Francisco will just be a rehash of the announcement in Berlin on Tuesday.
Autonomous search isn’t really search as we think of it — a user querying a massive database to get a result. Schmidt likened it to telling a user what he or she didn’t know, but was probably interested in seeing.
Google already sees more than a billion searches cross their servers daily, and providing an automated process that is constantly providing search data can only boost those numbers. With 96 percent of their revenue coming from advertising in the first half of 2010, there’s a lot of potential advertising revenue in an automated search engine.
Some are reporting seeing faster, “streaming” search results already. Here’s a video:
Companies: Google
People: Eric Schmidt
Categories: Technology
Matt Cohler Leads Funding for Scientist Social Network
NewYork Times Business Computing - 1 hour 47 min ago
ResearchGATE, a social network for scientists aimed to facilitate their collaboration on research, has raised an unspecified amount of money in its first institutional round of funding. The site has amassed 500,000 members in the last two years, with strong contingents from biology and medicine.
Categories: Technology
Revisiting Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector
Krebs on Security - 1 hour 52 min ago
Security vulnerability research firm Secunia has released a public beta of its Personal Software Inspector tool, a program designed to help Microsoft Windows users keep their heads above water with the torrent of security updates for third-party applications. The new beta version includes the promised auto-update feature that can automatically apply the latest patches for a growing number of widely-used programs.
Secunia first announced in March that it would soon make the auto-update feature available to consumers, noting that the average PC user needs to install a security update roughly every five days in order to safely use Microsoft Windows and all of the third-party programs that typically run on top of it. The new beta version doesn’t allow auto-updating for all applications, although Secunia says the list of applications that can be auto-updated through its tool will grow as the public beta progresses.
Overall, PSI 2.0 Beta seems to work quite a bit faster and use fewer resources than earlier versions. But my main concern in allowing third-party programs to update through PSI has so far been — ironically — relinquishing control over the update process. That’s because many “free” applications — such as Java, Adobe and Foxit readers — are free because a number of users never bother to deselect the check mark in the box next to offers to install additional software that is often bundled with these products, including virus scanners and various browser toolbars.
I am happy to report that so far this has not been an issue. On my test installation of the PSI 2.0 beta, it allowed auto-updating for 10 installed applications, including Adobe AIR, Flash Player, Foxit, Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Pidgin, Skype, Java, and xChat. The PSI tool updated all of those apps without any unwanted add-ons or toolbars that I can see.
Stefan Frei, research analyst director at Secunia, said the company wants to hear from users who receive more than just the security update.
“We always try to provide updates without unnecessary add-ons, but this is exactly the kind of of feedback we are looking for during the beta,” Frei said in an e-mail to KrebsOnSecurity.com. “So far we haven’t received any support cases indicating that we don’t hit it right on, but it is something we [are] aware of and will address if we receive any reports from users who find that it could be optimized.”
If PSI can’t auto-update any programs, it includes a clickable “Install Solution” link in the tool that fetches the executable update directly from the vendor’s Web site.
For those who don’t want to install PSI, Secunia makes available on its site an online version of this tool — Online Software Inspector — although the OSI requires users to have Java installed (PSI does not require Java).
If you’ve used the new PSI Beta, please sound off in the comments with your experiences.
Categories: Technology
Google CEO: The Next Great Stage of Search Is Automatic
NewYork Times Business Computing - 2 hours 7 min ago
Typing a search query into Google.com is such old news. Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a much-hyped keynote talk at Berlin's IFA home electronics event today and said that his vision for the future of search looks very, very different.
Schmidt says he believes that in the future, your mobile phone will quickly and automatically deliver personalized information to you based on your physical location and interests. "Since you are in location X right now, and have interest Y, Google thinks you'd like to know information Z," the search giant will effectively say to your phone.
Here's the key quote, as captured by PaidContent, a leading news site covering economics of digital content:
"Ultimately, search is not just the web but literally all of your information - your email, the things you care about, with your permission - this is personal search, for you and only for you.
"The next step of search is doing this automatically. When I walk down the street, I want my smartphone to be doing searches constantly - 'did you know?', 'did you know?', 'did you know?', 'did you know?'.
This notion of autonomous search - to tell me things I didn't know but am probably interested in, is the next great stage - in my view - of search."
That sounds pretty interesting, as long as you can turn it off and exercise some control over what's being sent. "What's that ping notification you just received," your mother-in-law might ask as you travel through town together. "Oh nothing," you might reply, "just Google telling me there is a business establishment nearby related to some of my recent search queries."
Seriously though, my long-term mobile search dream is this: Dear phone, please tell me about the history, ownership, news coverage and other information about the building I am looking at in front of me. Make that automatic and ambient and I'm going to be one happy Google Mobile Search user.
Many industry-watchers have separated search and recommendation, saying that recommendation could in fact be bigger than search: It's the search you didn't even know you wanted to perform yet.
PaidContent's Robert Andrews raises two very interesting points in his coverage: "1) Android is already a considerable power hog without searches being performed at every footstep; 2) if Google can increase searches to this incredible frequency, can it also ramp up search advertising in lockstep?"
Very related: Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution".
Categories: Technology
One Phone to Serve All: Is Galaxy Samsung’s iPhone?
NewYork Times Business Computing - 2 hours 7 min ago
Samsung's Galaxy S is headed to the big three carriers in China, which gives the company a realistic shot at selling 10 million Galaxy S handsets by the end of 2010. How is Samsung able to shoot for large sales numbers? It's taking an Apple approach.
Categories: Technology
Netflix Grabs More Streaming Content Ahead of Cable
NewYork Times Business Computing - 2 hours 17 min ago
Netflix is expanding its catalog of exclusive streaming content with a deal that will give its subscribers access to films from Nu Image/Millennium Films during the pay TV window. This is the second time Netflix has scored exclusive access to first-run movies ahead of cable networks.
Categories: Technology
Can Android Be Stopped in the World of Smartphones?
NewYork Times Business Computing - 3 hours 7 min ago
With worldwide carrier distribution, Android is on the march to dominate over the next four years, according to IDC. Nokia will still be the top dog, but it needs to be confident and deliver the strategies it has in place, else Google could own it all.
Categories: Technology
Digg Not Likely to Give Up on Cassandra
NewYork Times Business Computing - 3 hours 7 min ago
Cassandra, the NoSQL software is being blamed for scaling problems being faced by Digg, which led to the yet-unconfirmed departure of Digg VP of Engineering John Quinn, a champion of Cassandra. Still, we hear the social news site isn't giving up on the software - yet!
Categories: Technology
Lawsuit Shows HP Sees Hurd as Primal Threat
NewYork Times Business Computing - 5 hours 37 min ago
Hewlett-Packards reaction to the move by its former CEO, Mark Hurd, to the upper ranks of Oracle Corp. is one of sound and fury, but mostly fear.
Categories: Technology
The Future of Social Objects
NewYork Times Business Computing - 7 hours 47 min ago
The Internet of Things, when real world objects are connected to the Internet, has been slow to attract the attention of budding entrepreneurs. However, there has been some startup action in so-called "social objects." We've covered two companies in this domain in recent times, StickyBits and TalesOfThings. The New York Times profiled a third company in this space over the weekend, Itizen.
All of these startups are searching for a business model, but there is massive long term potential in this market. Leandro Agro, CEO of sensor data company WideTag (our review), says that by 2050 objects will be judged more for their 'sociality' than their aesthetic value. It's an intriguing notion, so in this post we imagine what a 'social' tennis racquet might look like in 40 years.
Living ObjectsIn an interview for Wired Italy and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, transcribed on the WideTag blog by David Orban, Leandro Agro said that "tomorrow a social object might be associated with Italy not because of its aesthetic value but because of its level of 'sociality'." He sees an opportunity for his country, Italy, to take a leadership role in re-inventing the design of objects:
"Every object should tell its own story. The story of its past (what it is made of, where it was produced, how it is used) and its future (how to differentiate it, how to take it apart, how to recycle it). It should be actively self-aware (being sentient or at least having some idea of the time and place for its own use), be connected and social, in other words it should belong to us humans, "living" as part of our digital and social network. "
I expressed skepticism about social objects earlier this year, because the early startups in this domain were attempting to create new social networks on top of objects. I still think that's the wrong model. However, there is a lot of scope for online data from objects to contribute to your existing social networks.
A Social Tennis Racquet (Circa 2050)Using Agro's vision, here is one possible scenario.
Imagine a tennis racquet with an RFID chip embedded in it. The chip specifies the materials the racquet was made with, which factory it was produced in and on what date, the strengths of that particular racquet compared to other models, and so on.
Then when the racquet is bought, the chip tracks the usage of the racquet. It will monitor for damage and wear, how often the strings are tightened or swapped out, and so on. It might also send to and receive information from other computing chips - in tennis courts, in the racquets of other players, inside tennis clubs, etc. This would enable the tennis racquet to, for example, automatically track the tournaments its owner enters and the games she plays in (let's assume this is an amateur player, since professional tennis players swap racquets every set or so!).
This Internet-connected tennis racquet has a social element because it is being used by a person, who presumably uses the racquet to play tennis with other people. So that data from the racquet can be a contributor to social networks.
Using today's social networks to illustrate the point (although surely these will be seen as rather primitive examples of social networks in 40 years time), imagine your tennis racquet automatically checking you in to a tennis court on Foursquare. Or the racquet updating your Facebook page when you defeat your mate in a social game of tennis. Or your racquet sending you a DM on Twitter when it requires string tightening (!).
These and many other scenarios will occur over time, as objects get connected to the Internet and the resulting data meshes in with your social networks. So by extension, the tennis racquet will become a 'social object.'
While this is a future-looking scenario, are you aware of objects that are already 'social'? And do you think StickyBits, TalesofThings, Itizen and others are on the right track to realize this vision?
Categories: Technology
Red Bend Buys VirtualLogix for Mobile Virtualization
NewYork Times Business Computing - 8 hours 17 min ago
Red Bend, a mobile software management company, has acquired VirtualLogix to stake its claim in the emerging field of mobile virtualization.
Categories: Technology
Cisco, Citrix Team on Desktop Virtualization Package
NewYork Times Business Computing - 8 hours 17 min ago
A combined offering from Cisco and Citrix offers turn-key desktop virtualization capability
Categories: Technology
Salesforce.com Readies Native Mobile Chatter Apps
NewYork Times Business Computing - 8 hours 17 min ago
Salesforce.com is working on a series of native mobile applications for its Chatter collaboration software, the company announced Wednesday. Supported platforms include Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Google Android and Reseach in Motion's BlackBerry.
Categories: Technology
Symantec: Most Hacking Victims Blame Themselves
NewYork Times Business Computing - 8 hours 17 min ago
Just under two-thirds of all Internet users have been hit by some sort of cybercrime, and while most of them are angry about it, a surprisingly large percentage feel guilt too, according to a survey commissioned by Symantec.
Categories: Technology
Salesforce.com Launches Chatter Mobile to Keep On-The-Go Employees Updated
NewYork Times Business Computing - 11 hours 27 min ago
Salesforce.com, a company that creates applications for sales and customer support, today announced the launch of Chatter Mobile, a mobile application for colleagues to stay up to date on work activities while out of the office.
The mobile application leverages Salesforce.com’s Chatter feature, which allows users to share information and collaborate in real-time from their desktop, and brings it to their mobile devices. Users are alerted through the application when colleagues make status updates or make posts to conversations or documents. The ability to make updates and comment on conversations from a mobile device is also available. The application will be available on Apple iPad, iPhone and the new iPod touch, Google Android and RIM BlackBerry.
Competition in the enterprise collaboration space has been rapidly evolving lately. Yammer originally launchd as a Twitter for businesses to bring the microblogging service’s sort updates to internal corporate conversations. It’s now probably Salesforce.com’s biggest competitor, having recently announced its launch of social-network-infused enterprise applications meant to help customers connect their employees and improve on collaboration in real-time.
Jive Software, a well-funded collaboration-tools startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, also has mobile features for its social business software.
Salesforce.com appears to have the competitive edge with the launch of its mobile applications, a likely next step for Yammer.
Salesforce.com claims 20,000 customers are currently using Chatter, which accounts for close to 25% of the Salesforce.com’s total customer base of 82,400, according to the company’s announcement. With a good chunk of current customers using Chatter, the likelihood that employees will adopt Chatter Mobile while out of the office or in a conference room may be pretty high.
Salesforce Chatter and Chatter Mobile are included with no additional charge for subscribers to Salesforce’s CRM and Force.com services.
Companies: salesforce, Salesforce.com, Yammer
Categories: Technology
