Here’s a cool site on how to embed video on your site – which handles HTML 5, Quicktime, Flash downgrading gracefully: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
I’m starting to see the writing on the wall that HTML5 (H.264 likely) will overtake Flash for video in the future. Google and Apple are pushing hard for it – and in theory it works a lot better. I don’t have a lot of experience with it myself – but I’m learning. I just put a YouTube video on one of my clients sites: http://www.bradbuyshomes.com/. I originally made this video as an AVI and uploaded it to YouTube (which took a while). Unfortunately it didn’t work – so I then exported it as MPEG-2 and that worked better. Probably MPEG-4 is now the best choice – buy my Roxio Videowave doesn’t have any MPEG-4 at anything other than very small resolution outputs. I should have used Pinnacle Studio to create the MPEG-4 file….
I’m wondering if Palm has a future – given the intense competition in the smartphone market. There was a rumor they were shutting down production but I still wonder about the long term. I’ve been a long term Palm user – back to the Handspring day so I’m actually a fan. I’ve been using some Palm apps for quite a few years – and was an original fan of “Grafitti” I’ve been thinking about upgrading from my Palm Centro to a Palm Pre for a while -but am wondering if that’s a good long term strategy. Read more »
I’ve played with Google Buzz some the last few days and have some first impressions. Frankly I’m still trying to find my equilibrium with social networks – the best way to interact with them. I had heard about Buzz (from Twitter) so I decided to try it. This involved doing something I hadn’t done for some time – log into Gmail. I’ve never really been a Gmail user – as I’m used to my Outlook client and the multiple e-mail addresses I have. In fact recently I merged 2 different outlook files together – plus and archive file. I’m a pack rat when it comes to e-mails – keeping just about everything. Read more »
The news about Google is starting to get interesting – in terms of the scope of what they are addressing now. Google seems to be building a vertical stack of services to cover almost everything to do with the computer. This goes back to what Jeff Jarvis said – Google makes money when we use the web (advertising, advertising, advertising) – and faster means more:
- Google announced today they’re planning on testing out a new 1 gigabit internet service (http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi) – so they could be in the neighborhood soon.
- Google has a DNS service (http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/) – the magic thingy that translates the names we type in into the numbers that define the internet.
- Google has Gmail – it’s free web-based e-mail service. It has a corresponding calendar, contacts, etc. service. One concept of calendars is you can share them – have group calendars, etc.
- Google has it’s Google Docs – word, processing, spreadsheets, presentation, etc. – so you can do those basics online. Read more »
For a long time I was a pretty regular IE user – never really paying much attention to Firefox or other browsers. I was impressed with tabs in IE – as this is a great usability feature. Most everything I needed to do worked fine in IE – and it was very dominant in the market share. Then I started to have problems – when IE would try to restore the tabs after a reboot (which we know doesn’t happen very often with windows) and would seem to crash. It seemed to get less and less stable over time…
Sometime last year I finally made the plunge and tried Firefox. I was quite impressed with Firefox – especially with it’s support for more standards (like curved borders!!) and the extensions. It’s just neat to be able to apply a theme to the browser so it looks cooler.
Recently I decided to try out Google Chrome as I had heard a lot about it too. Read more »
I read this article on Techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/lessig-calls-google-book-settlement-a-path-to-insanity/ about a view on the Google Book project. The author, Lawrence Lessig, criticizes the Google Book project settlement on concerns over how this might change copyright law. He’s concerned with if books are treated in parts – instead of in totality – it will make future usability very difficult.
I agree that this digital world has seriously challenged the role of intellectual property in our society. The power of technology has changed our ability to use “intellectual” property in new ways – to make it much easier to store, use, copy, share, etc. what is someone else’s work. Read more »
I enjoyed reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. This book, despite the title, was not so much about Google but about the impact of Google/Internet has had on companies – especially looking to the future. Overall this book was a good read – as you can tell Jeff Jarvis is a college professor by the insights he has into the effect of Google. If you wondering what the future will possibly be like for many businesses in an Internet age I would highly recommend this book.
For my own sake (and hopefully yours) I will now note some of the items I really learned from this book:
Read more »
I noticed yesterday a new feature on Google’s search – near-real time results. There is a box on the search results that was changing – it was showing some real-time search results:
Read more »
It’s all in the news now – that Google is likely pulling out of China – or in essence if they won’t censor content anymore they will be blocked by China. This is in the wake of what everyone believes if China hacking into Google searching for Chinese human right’s leaders information. I wonder if this just ticked Google off and they had enough. It’s a potential revenue loss for Google – but then again they’re whole model is free information which censorship really puts a kink into.
I wonder if this really will impact China – they seem to be an economic Juggernaut that can almost set it’s own terms. That the rest of the world is willing to toe the line because of the money (drooling over a growing market). Will China really be impacted without Google’s products? It seems like the citizens of the country will toe the line – they don’t seem to be frustrated with the censorship. Maybe they’re just happy with a new standard of living – which they may believe the government is helping them obtain. It’s unlikely there will be a popular revolt over losing Google (but I could be wrong). Read more »
Google today announced their new “Nexus One” phone and one of the key points was the concept of buying the phone as unlocked. Buying it full price and choosing whatever carrier you want (in reality it’s only T-mobile and AT&T right now). This is not the normal model in the US – instead we pay a small fee (large to some of us) and sign a contract with a carrier. Then they basically pick up the rest of the cost of the phone over the course of the contract. Read more »
February 27, 2010 12:48 pm | 
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