Google just announced Google Wave on the second day of its Google I/O Conference. A product that is potentially disruptive but is not open to all anytime soon, Google provides an invite to a early build only for the conference attendees.

So what is Google Wave?

• Google Wave is a collaboration, sharing and communication platform based on HTML 5 technologies.

• Google Wave combines elements of email, instant messaging and rich documents collaboration, live.

• A “wave” is a communication/chat/collaboration session. Analogous to a ‘chat’ session in instant messaging.

• Google Wave received standing ovation from the attendees after its presentation.

• Google Wave is from brothers Lars and Yen Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon, the same Google team behind Google Maps.

• Lars Rasumussen: “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”

• Beside being an end product, Google Wave also provides API for developer to embed Wave functionality into their websites.

• On top of offering developer API, Google also publish the Google Wave Federation Protocol. This is an open specification allowing third party to build and run their own Wave server and system. Similar to SMTP being the open protocol for you to run your own email server.

• Google Wave has a cool real-time translation feature.

• There will be Google Wave for Android and iPhone.

• Google Wave might be a competitor to Twitter, both are realtime and live communication platforms.

• Google Wave will be available later this year. You can sign up for Google Wave Updates.

People normally do not upgrade their Mac or MacBook every year, unless you are the fortunate one who can afford so. A three year-old Mac is still very much usable for common day-to-day tasks due to an efficient Mac OS X, upgrade is inevitable eventually.

Some people hold on to their Mac purchase, mostly convinced by Apple rumor mill that a new Mac release is imminent. For us, anytime is a good time to buy a Mac since you can not always catch up with technologies. But it is always wise to look after your pocket by looking a bit farther on the horizon and plan the schedule for your purchase.

We look at few technologies that are likely to make it into Macs and MacBook by end of this year or in 2010.

USB 3

At 10 times the bandwidth of the current ubiquitous USB2.0, the third iteration is poised to appear in consumer products in 2010. With a speed of roughly 5Gbps, USB 3 may well spell the death nail for Firewire as one of standard ports in Macs.

SATA 3

SATA3 spec is officially completed and released 2 days ago by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO). The new spec boost the transfer speed to 6 Gbps and is backward compatible with existing SATA devices.

SATA 3 is a natural upgrade to be the next standard in hard disk interface. SATA3 hard disk is expected to be widely available by end of this year. Apple might lead the industry to be the first to adopt this as standard in Macs.

Continue reading »

Google today started its largest yearly developer conference Google I/O 2009 with announcements of new web initiatives and products to enable and accelerate web application development. One of the key theme of this year’s two-day event is to promote open web technologies and new functionalities in HTML 5 standards.

HTML 5 standard is still work in progress with some expect the draft spec may not be rectified for years. However the latest build for all open standard browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome) has support for HTML 5 features such as rich animation, canvas 2D drawing, MIME type and protocol handler, offline storage database, in-browser editing and drag-and drop. HTML 5 represents the biggest leap of web standards in almost a decade.

“Bet on the web,” said Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Developer Products at Google. “Its rate of innovation has dramatically accelerated over the past 12 months, giving rise to an open web platform that’s fundamentally more capable and more sophisticated than even a year ago. The combination of HTML 5, a vibrant developer community, and the pervasiveness of modern web browsers is delivering a programming model and an end-user experience that will surprise and delight people.”

Beside unveiling Java support in App Engine and its Android Developer Challenge initiative, Google introduced Google Web Elements to the 4000 strong attendees. Google Web Elements are widgets of contents from Google such as Maps, News, YouTube as well as social networking features of Google Friend Connect. Web Elements make it easy to developer to add such functionality by just copying and pasting few lines of code.

Inside Facebook has reported that people over 55 are quitting Facebook, citing numbers over the last two 60 day periods. Mark Zuckerberg can still find comfort that Facebook crosses over 60 million monthly users in US, however overall growth for users over 35 is now cooler compared to Feb/Mar period.

However, the number of active users over 55 actually decreased by over 650,000 during this period. In other words, users over 55 who joined the site earlier this year haven’t been coming back as much in April and May, even though the number of active users in every other age bracket has gone up.

We have noticed that usage is down recently for our Facebook friends, but would not attribute it to Facebook’s recent “live stream” interface changes. Getting a large growth rate for new user sign up is one thing, but return rate is the true measure of real worth especially for a social networking site.

Is the drop in return rate a result of its recent interface changes? Is the interface too hard for older people? Is Twitter eating into Facebook’s user base? Is Facebook only cool with kids or is Facebook no longer the hip club it once was? Too many questions but only time will tell if Facebook will become just another AOL.

Google has added a “Businesses” layer to Google Earth for iPhone, allowing local search for businesses such as restaurants, bars, banks, gas stations, and grocery stores.

Icons for businesses will be displayed along side the satellite imagery. Tapping on the icon will get additional information about the business such as telephone number, opening hours and reviews.

Choosing a blogging software can be confusing nowadays due to the many choices available. It pays to spend some effort to select the most suitable platform before your fist blog post. It is often not a straight forward process switching blogging platform down the road if you intend to migrate all your old posts and pictures. The following are some pointers and check list to get you started in making the best choice.

Type of blogging software

Blogging software can be largely categorized into three groups depending on how it is meant to be used. General purpose blogging software includes the typical products such as Blogger, WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, LiveJournal etc. These are for committed bloggers, blogging for business and for posts that are not mostly expression of 140 or less characters.

You might want to consider micro-blogging if you express mostly in short messages. Micro-blogging or ‘status updates’ in Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed etc is all the rage at the moment. It requires less commitment when writing up a new post, but is not suitable for let say an article debating a certain cause.

In the middle ground are platforms that offer the traditional blogging features but also allow easy, quick and fun posting of short updates, links and media. Tumblr and Posterous are example of such service.

Starting a blog with the intend of growing viewership is a big commitment. You need a passion for writing and for the topic concerned. On the other end, some has turned their blog into a life journal, posting quick updates and views on life experience for the purpose of updating friends and family or whoever is interested. Asking the question ‘why blog?’ helps to narrow down the selection of your blogging platform.

Continue reading »

Apple’s App Store pioneered the managed mobile application marketplace, even though Apple is one of the last major players to enter the smartphone race. App Store has so far surpassed expectation with its billion downloads recently and is one of the major differentiating feature of iPhone compared with other smartphone platform.

The overwhelming success of App Store spurs other vendors to develop their own store in order to compete. In case you are confused by the different naming for app stores, here is the list of Apple App Store’s competitors:

App World

BlackBerry launched App World in Apr. Visit the store.

Android Market

Android Market for Google Android based phones was launched in Oct 2008, with the availability of paid apps from Feb this year for US market.

App Catalog

This could be the name for Palm’s app store for its webOS devices, nothing is confirmed until Palm Pre’s official debut, which should be anytime now. But there is no indication if Palm’s app store will be available together with the launch of the first webOS phone.

Ovi Store

Nokia’s Ovi branding is more than just a store, the Ovi website encompasses other phone services such as contacts and calendar sync to the internet cloud, similar to what is being offered in MobileMe and Microsoft’s MyPhone.

Nokia on Monday began rolling out its Ovi Store to production servers, and is live today worldwide for Nokia phone owners. TechCrunch took a spin and called the launch a complete disaster.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Microsoft has yet to launch its Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store for Windows Mobile platform, but you can’t help but notice the store has the longest name among all the app stores, just like most of other Microsoft products. We suspect the branding is from the same marketing team behind Windows Vista.

Too many app stores for our money indeed. Will there be app store from Sony Ericsson or even Motorola?

Updated June 03, 2009 – Sony Ericsson announced their PlayNow Arena app store

Microsoft is spending an estimated $80 million to $100million to convince people to go “binging” instead of “googling” when it comes to search. Microsoft will launch the ad campaign when it unveils its new search engine next week.

Code-named “Kumo”, the search engine will most likely be branded Bing, and is Microsoft’s third attempt at winning the lucrative search marketplace, after the not-so-successful MSN Search and then Live Search. Live Search is the fourth most used search engine, after Google, Baidu and Yahoo!. Microsoft Bing is likely to incorporate the semantic search technology of Powerset which Microsoft acquired last year, after its failed bid for Yahoo! search.

Not much is known about the new search engine except for leaks screenshots in March. From the look of it, we could not see how Bing will be drastically better than Google, which is what Bing needs if it intends to sway away users’ search habits. Playing catch-up is not always easy, the problem for Bing is Google is doing a pretty good job at the moment.

Lately it is hard to get excited by anything from Microsoft. We will see if third time is a charm for Microsoft. Let’s hope Bing brings some cool search breakthrough and spice up the competition. Winning the search marketplace is a daunting task, increasingly we are seeing ‘live-search’ capability (Twitter search) gaining importance in the search landscape, and we doubt Bing is equipped and ready for it. Bing’s challenge is Google and Yahoo, and not forgetting Twitter and Facebook search.

Will spending 100 million greenbacks be enough to convince people Bing is a better verb than Google for search? Good luck Microsoft.

It is reported that North Carolina officials are tempting Apple with multi-million dollar tax break to house its server farm in the state. The investment by Apple is estimated to be $1 billion. Apple and North Carolina’s Commerce Department, the lead agency in business development, have declined to comment on the report.

The tax breaks could be worth about $46 million in the next decade, assuming the company reaches its $1 billion investment target within nine years of starting, according to a memo by legislative fiscal staffers that does not identify the company. The memo said no current company meets the criteria to receive the tax break and the Commerce Department knows of just one with the potential to qualify.

The new Apple server farm is expected to employ fewer than 100 full-time staffs initially, but legislators justified changing the state’s corporate tax formula for one company based on its potential over the long term. In 2007, Google committed to spending $600 million for a server farm near Lenoir in the western North Carolina foothills. The server farm opened last year.

It is interesting to speculate how Apple will make use of this new server farm, if the report is correct. We suspect the site will be a new addition to Apple’s existing server farms, rather than a relocation. The new server farm’s most likely purpose will be to cater for the Push Notification Service, which will be launched together with iPhone firmware 3.0.

Susan Boyle is one step closer to her dream, she proceeded to the semi-finals of British’s Got Talent last Sat night. We are keeping track of Susan Boyle to see how her career will play out after being a YouTube sensation overnight. Her “I Dreamed A Dream” performance on British’s Got Talent is in tracking company Visible Measures’ 100 Million Views Club.

Will Susan Boyle becomes British’s Got Talent this season’s winner? Will she release an album and will her singing career be a success? So, we are curious to know if being a hit on the internet means anything at all. Below are some quick links about her, helpful if you find it too much to Google her.

• The YouTube video that started it all

• British’s Got Talent Website

  Continue reading »