Google Chrome May Be Pre-installed On New PCs
How did Internet Explorer become the number one browser in the world? Simple – it came with every new computer you purchased, pre-installed and ready to go. Now it seems Google is contemplating doing the same with their browser, Google Chrome. According to Google VP, Product Management, Sundar Pichai, the browser’s beta period will end in January and then they “will probably do distribution deals,” he says.
In an article that ran in yesterday’s The Times, Pichai revealed details on what he called Google’s plans to make Chrome the browser of choice for the everyday user. A big part of that plan includes distribution deals with computer manufacturers.
“We could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed,” he was quoted as saying. Thanks to the anti-trust rulings that came out of the IE / Netscape battle back in the 1990’s, there’s nothing to prevent Google from doing deals of their own with computer makers, if they desire.
Once Google has a glitch-free version of Chrome sometime early next year, “we will throw our weight behind it,” said Pinchai. “We’ve been conservative because its still in beta, but once we get it out of beta we will work hard at getting the word out, promoting to users, and marketing will be a part of that.” (A link on Google’s homepage might help with those marketing efforts, but not as much as we previously thought).
Pichai also noted that versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac computers will become available in the first half of next year which would allow the browser to work on almost 99% of computers worldwide.
(source)
Keyboard Shortcuts to Navigate Through Google Search Results
A post on the Official Google Blog reminded us of a recently launched search experiment from Google called Accessible View. With this opt-in experimental version of Google.com, you can navigate through your search results using keyboard shortcuts. For those of you who are already heavy users of Google Reader, the inbox for the RSS-obsessed, these shortcuts will be very familiar to you. Although designed for people with disabilities, we gave the keyboard shortcuts a whirl to see if it made sense to use them on a regular basis.
In the Google Accessible View search experiment, you can navigate through the search results using the following shortcuts (see below).
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Current keyboard shortcuts include:
j or DOWN – Selects the next item.
k or UP – Selects the previous item.
l or RIGHT – Moves to the next category (results, sponsored links, refinements).
h or LEFT – Moves to the previous category (results, sponsored links, refinements).
<Enter> – Opens the selected result.
/ – Puts the cursor in the search box.
n – Moves to the next result, and fetches more results if necessary.
p – Moves to the previous result, reloading earlier results if necessary.
= – Magnifies current item
– – Shrinks current item
A – Switches to Accessible Search Results
W – Switches to regular Web Search Results
The “A” switches you Accessible Search Results, which identifies and prioritizes search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. The “W” switches you back to regular results.
(source)
Air Cars: A New Wind for America’s Roads?
A new carmaker has a plan for cheap, environmentally friendly cars to be built all over the country
An air-powered car? It may be available sooner than you think at a price tag that will hardly be a budget buster. The vehicle may not run like a speed racer on back road highways, but developer Zero Pollution Motors is betting consumers will be willing to fork over $20,000 for a vehicle that can motor around all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.
The expertise needed to build a compressed air car, or CAV, is not rocket science, either. Years-old, off-the-shelf technology uses compressed air to drive old-fashioned car engine pistons instead of combusting gas or diesel fuel to create a burst of air to do the same thing. Indian carmaker Tata has no qualms about the technology. It has already bought the rights to make the car for the huge Indian market.
The air car can tool along at a top speed of 35 mph for some 60 miles or so on a tank of compressed air, a sufficient distance for 80% of consumers to commute to work and back and complete daily chores.
 Courtesy of MDI |
On highways, the CAV can cruise at interstate speeds for nearly 800 miles with a small motor that compresses outside air to keep the tank filled. The motor isn’t finicky about fuel. It will burn gasoline or diesel as well as biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil.
This car leaves the highest-mpg vehicles you can buy right now in the dust. Even if it used only regular gasoline, the air car would average 106 mpg, more than double today’s fuel sipping champ, the Toyota Prius. The air tank also can be refilled when it’s not in use by being plugged into a wall socket and recharged with electricity as the motor compresses air.
Automakers aren’t quite ready yet to gear up huge assembly line operations churning out air cars or set up glitzy dealer showrooms where you can ooh and aah over the color or style. But the vehicles will be built in factories that will make up to 8,000 vehicles a year, likely starting in 2011, and be sold directly to consumers.
There will be plants in nearly every state, based on the number of drivers in the state. California will have as many as 17 air car manufacturing plants, and there’ll be around 12 in Florida, eight in New York, four in Georgia, while two in Connecticut will serve that state and Rhode Island.
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The technology goes back decades, but is coming together courtesy of two converging forces. First, new laws are likely to be enacted in a few years that will limit carbon dioxide emissions and force automakers to develop ultra-high mileage cars and those that emit minuscule amounts of or no gases linked with global warming. Plug-in electric hybrids will slash these emissions, but they’ll be pricey at around $40,000 each and require some changes in infrastructure — such as widespread recharge stations — to be practical. Fuel cells that burn hydrogen to produce only water vapor still face daunting technical challenges.
Second, the relatively high cost of gas has expedited the air car’s development. Yes, pump prices have plunged since July from record levels, but remain way higher than just a few years ago and continue to take a bite out of disposable income. Refiners will face carbon emission restraints, too, and steeply higher costs will be passed along at the pump.
Tata doesn’t plan to produce the cars in the U.S. Instead, it plans to charge $15 million for the rights to the technology, a fully built turnkey auto assembly plant, tools, machinery, training and rights to use trademarks.
The CAV has a big hurdle: proving it can pass federal crash tests. Shiva Vencat, president and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, says he’s not worried. “The requirements can be modeled [on a computer] before anything is built and adjusted to ensure that the cars will pass” the crash tests. Vencat also is a vice president of MDI Inc., a French company that developed the air car.
The inventor of this technology is Mr. Guy Negre, who is the founder and CEO of MDI SA, a company headquartered in Luxembourg with its R and D in Nice, France.
How to find Fresh Apps for your iPhone?
Who would be better for Technology, John McCain or Barack Obama?
Because there is so much at stake in the direction of the United States’ economy, health care system, and energy policies, technology issues have taken a back seat in the 2008 presidential election.
Nevertheless, there are currently a host of critical technology concerns on the table in Washington, and the next U.S. chief executive will have the opportunity to significantly influence these concerns, all of which will have major implications on the direction and development of the U.S. technology sector over the next decade.
Below are what I consider to be the five most important technology policy issues – ranked in order – followed by the list of positions from the two candidates.
1. Net Neutrality – This proposed legislation would guarantee that telecommunications providers cannot control, prioritize, or filter the types of applications and content that Internet customers use. It demands that Internet Service Providers act as good stewards of the Internet, rather than monopolists.
2. Broadband development – The U.S. is increasingly lagging behind other developed nations in the penetration and affordability of high-speed broadband. There are some complicated reasons for this (included the widespread geography of the U.S.), but a lot of it is due to lack of competition and over-consolidation due to current U.S. policies and regulations. Broadband Internet is a major economic enabler and it demands much more serious and proactive policies from Washington.
3. R&D tax credits – The U.S. research and development tax credit expired in December 2007 for the 13th time since 1981. In October, Congress finally extended the basic R&D tax credit through 2009, but lawmakers continue to resist making it permanent. The country that is home to Apple, Microsoft, Google and a host of other tech innovators that export American technologies throughout the world needs to incent these tech companies to keep their primary innovation work on these shores.
4. H1B Visas – While the K-12 education system in the U.S. continues to struggle to keep up with the rest of the world, the U.S. higher education systems remains a bright spot that attracts many of the world’s most talented students. The H1B Visa program helps keep many of those students in the U.S. after they graduate by providing them with Visas if they land jobs here. While the execution of this program has led to employers abusing it in some cases, it remains a necessary program for high tech companies to hire the engineers and computer scientists they need.
5. Green tech – If the U.S. were a business run by a CEO and a board of directors, it is very likely that they would look at the current market opportunities and determine that the best places for the U.S. to innovate and invest for the future would be in energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources to oil. This field is often referred to as “green tech” and it requires a huge investment of capital. Unfortunately, the current economic downturn will likely limit private donors and venture capitalists from investing as much money here, so tax breaks and federal government funds will be needed to stimulate growth and push the U.S. toward a global leadership position.
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John McCain on tech
Net Neutrality
McCain is an opponent of Net Neutrality, believing that it is unnecessary government intervention. As his official campaign material states, “John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like ‘net-neutrality,’ but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.”
McCain’s point is well taken but there currently isn’t enough competition to make this work, because of the massive consolidation in telecommunications. If McCain were proposing new and specific ways to foster more competition in the ISP market then his rebuttal of Net Neutrality would be understandable, but he doesn’t.
Broadband development
One of the biggest problems in the U.S. broadband business is the lack of the kind of competition that McCain would like to see to make Net neutrality unnecessary. Unfortunately, McCain, as chair of the Senate Commerce committee, is one of the lawmakers to blame for allowing the telecommunications consolidation that is at the heart of the problem.
On the other hand, McCain sponsored the “Community Broadband Bill” that allows local governments to become ISPs when private companies fail to offer decent services in their localities. In several areas this has been very effective and it is certainly a legitimate part of the solution to stronger broadband development.
McCain has promised to identify un-served and underserved communities (especially rural areas) and offer government-backed loans, low-interest bonds, and tax credits to companies that bring broadband to these communities, as well as those that offer broadband services to low-income households. McCain has also pledged to support more telecommuting in the federal government.
R&D tax credits
McCain’s materials say, “A top priority needs to be putting private capital to work in research and development. As President, John McCain will establish a permanent Research and Development (R&D) tax credit equal to 10 percent of wages spent on R&D. Offering a tax credit for R&D wages will encourage the creation of innovation-driven jobs in the United States.”
However, the current (temporary) R&D tax credit is 14% so McCain’s proposal would be a decrease.
H1B Visas
McCain would make the big U.S. tech companies very happy by potentially growing the number of H1B Visas that the U.S. has to offer. Here’s his official line: “John McCain will expand the number of H-1B visas to allow our companies to keep top-notch talent — often trained in our graduate schools — in the United States. The Department of Labor should be allowed to set visa levels appropriate for market conditions. Hiring skilled foreign workers to fill critical shortages benefits not only innovative companies, but also our economy.”
McCain has been a co-sponsor of supportive H1B legislation in the past and has voted to raise the cap on H1Bs multiple times.
Green tech
Unlike many members of his party, McCain is a strong believer in global warming and climate change. In August he said, “The fact is climate change is real. The debate should have been over.” He has made energy independence one his top priorities, although some of his energy proposals are environmentally friendly and others are not.
He supports off-shore drilling and an increase in nuclear power – both of which can have a negative environmental impact. On the other hand, he disagrees with his own running mate about drilling for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge because he doesn’t think it can be done in an ecological manner.
As far as Green tech specifically, McCain has stated, “Green jobs and green technology will be vital to our economic future. There is no reason that the U.S. should not be a leader in developing and deploying these new technologies.” However, McCain has not allocated a significant chunk of his potential energy budget to green tech.
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Barack Obama on tech
Net Neutrality
This is the one issue where Senator Obama offers the biggest contrast to Senator McCain. Obama has been a repeated and unequivocal supporter of Net Neutrality. Here’s his official line: “A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.”
Obama is very unlikely to change his stance on this subject. He’s even been on the Google campus to tout his Net Neutrality position.
Broadband development
Obama talks intelligently and says all the right things about this issue – like he does on most issues – but he does not have an extensive legislative record on broadband policy and it’s unclear how much of a priority championing broadband development would be in a potential Obama administration.
His official statement is “As a country, we have ensured that every American has access to telephone service and electricity, regardless of economic status, and I will do likewise for broadband Internet access. Full broadband penetration can enrich democratic discourse, enhance competition, provide economic growth, and bring significant consumer benefits. Moreover, improving our infrastructure will foster competitive markets for Internet access and services that ride on that infrastructure. Market forces will drive the deployment of broadband in many parts of the country, but not all. To get true broadband deployed in every community in America, we need to reform the Universal Service Fund, make better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promote next-generation facilities, technologies, and applications, and provide new tax and loan incentives.”
Again, that sounds great. But would it be a priority, and would it be affordable? I’m not quite sure where he’s going with the proposal to improve federal infrastructure to support universal broadband. His principal of making broadband the next utility to join phone and power is a great idea, but it would likely need to be a long-term vision since the U.S. will certainly be faced with short-term budget challenges in the next administration.
R&D tax credits
Obama’s campaign material states, “Barack Obama wants investments in a skilled research and development workforce and technology infrastructure to be supported here in America so that American workers and communities will benefit. Obama and Biden want to make the Research and Development tax credit permanent so that firms can rely on it when making decisions to invest in domestic R&D over multi-year timeframes.” Unlike McCain, Obama doesn’t say the percentage he would set for the R&D tax credit.
However, there could be political pressure that would work against Obama keeping this promise. The opponents of R&D tax cuts demonize the program as federal handouts to big business. On the campaign trail, Obama has railed against Republican tax policies giving out tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations. It could be politically difficult for Obama to justify R&D tax cuts unless he can find a way to sell it as something that benefits the average American worker.
H1B Visas
Obama does not put emphasis on his H1B Visa policy as part of his technology plan, but in an interview he stated, “I will support a temporary increase in the H-1B visa program as a stopgap measure until we can reform our immigration system comprehensively. I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes improvement in our visa programs, including our legal permanent resident visa programs and temporary programs including the H-1B program, to attract some of the world’s most talented people to America. We should allow immigrants who earn their degrees in the U.S. to stay, work, and become Americans over time.”
This is minimal support for the H1B Visa program and that fits with the kind of protectionist rhetoric that Obama has been using on the campaign trail as he has talked about creating more jobs for American workers here at home.
Green tech
Obama has repeatedly stated that energy independence would be his top priority, if elected. His plan is to create five million new “green collar” jobs in a new alternative energy industry that he would fund with a $150 billion investment over 10 years to stimulate private investment in a future powered by clean energy and driven by American innovation. He also makes to make energy efficiency and conservation a national priority.
Although McCain talks about a lot of the same goals, he’s not proposing anywhere near the amount of investment that Obama wants to put into his clean energy crusade.
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Final verdict
In terms of rating the candidates on my top five issues, I would give John McCain the nod for being the stronger candidate in R&D tax cuts and H1B Visas, while I think Barack Obama would be better when it comes to Net Neutrality and Green tech. That leaves Broadband development as the tie breaker.
Obama has a broader vision for broadband by thinking of it as the next standard utility, like electricity and the telephone, but McCain has a track record of smaller legislative victories that have helped drive progress. Ultimately, I think this issue hinges on which candidate will better foster an atmosphere of true competition in the broadband business, and neither of these two inspire a lot of confidence there.
McCain thinks the free market alone will solve most of the problems and Obama relies too heavily on government regulation and intervention, when what’s needed is just-enough government regulation to ensure free market competition.
However, since McCain has presided over massive consolidation in the broadband market, and Obama is more likely to bring back and enforce the Clinton-era 1996 Telecommunications Act, which forced the telecoms to open up their lines to smaller resellers, Obama wins this one by a nose and that also gives him the overall nod as the candidate that could potentially have a stronger impact on the technology industry.
There are also a few other secondary factors that help tilt this in Obama’s direction:
- If elected he plans to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- His first sponsored bill that became law was “Google for Government,” which shows his interest in technology
- In a recent interview Obama said he’d like to take what he and his team have learned about using technology in the campaign and apply it to government. He was primarily referring to electronic communications.
- The fact that he’s talked about making electronic medical records a key part of his health care plan (as a way to drive efficiency) shows that he generally views technology as a powerful enabler
This is not an official TechRepublic endorsement of Senator Obama. I would not expect anyone — even techies — to base their vote on the next U.S. leader solely on these issues. However, for those of us who make a living in the technology space and have so much invested in its future development, we should all be well-informed about where the candidates stand on the legislative, regulatory, and investment issues that will dramatically affect the technology industry in the critical years ahead.
Further reading
- John McCain’s technology platform (johnmccain.com)
- Barack Obama’s technology platform (barackobama.com)
- Obama vs. McCain: The Wired.com Scorecard (Wired)
- Obama’s and McCain’s Technology Policies Examined (ScienceDaily)
- McCain and Obama’s Tech Platforms (Today’s Engineer)
- Science & Technology: McCain & Obama (Scientists & Engineers for America)
- Scientists view both Obama, McCain as supportive (USA Today)
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(source)
By Jason Hiner is the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, ZDNet’s sister site in the business technology world. See his full profile and read his blog Tech Sanity Check. You can also follow him on Twitter.
MySpace, Auditude, And MTV Have Figured Out How To Monetize Online Video
Since YouTube heralded the era of user-uploaded videos, media corporations have been fighting a hopeless battle to regain control of their content, sending out endless waves of DMCA notices in a vain attempt to take down countless clips scattered across the web. In the last year sites like Hulu have made progress – it’s finally possible to legally embed of a clip of The Office in your blog, but publishers continue to lose out on millions of video clips that weren’t upload with permission.
Now MySpace – a site that once seemed the antithesis of innovation – has implemented an exciting new ad platform called Auditude that may change the way content owners treat uploaded video entirely. The new platform will automatically identify any uploaded video clips from a number of shows produced by MTV Networks (including my personal favorite “The Daily Show”), and will display an overlay when the clip is played that shows which episode the clip originally came from, its original air-date, and links to online stores where users can buy the entire episode.
In the past it has been nearly impossible to effectively monetize user-uploaded videos because they are typically tagged with such informative titles as “REally cool!” and “hilarious”. The Auditude platform ignores this information, relying solely on fingerprints taken from the clip’s audio and video data. These fingerprints are matched to prints in Auditude’s massive database, which spans over 250 million videos and 4 years of television content, all sorted by show and airdate.
Even more impressive: Auditude can fingerprint a portion of a video that is only a few seconds long and identify which show it was originally taken from. Once the clip is identified Auditude will overlay an ad within the video, allowing publishers to monetize their content even when it was uploaded by someone without permission and without any legible tagging information.
MySpace will be implementing the system with initial support for content from MTV Networks, with shows including The Colbert Report, Punk’d, and Sarah Silverman. So every time you post a clip of Jon Stewart ripping on the presidential candidates, someone is going to get paid, and users won’t have to deal with the often-clunky proprietary video players offered by each network. And instead of trying to prevent these clips from making it onto MySpace in the first place, content owners will want users to upload as many as possible.
Unfortunately, this may prove difficult: after years of being told not to upload these videos, users will probably take a while to warm up to the idea. But if it catches on (and it probably will), expect to see content owners flock to form partnerships with MySpace – there isn’t currently another video platform out there that is able to identify and monetize content this effectively. We’ll probably also see the Auditude platform implemented elsewhere as other sites try to catch up.
Last year YouTube launched a similar service called Video ID that gives publishers the option of either taking down illegal content or placing ads on it.
(source)
Microsoft Document Editor for Apple iPhone
DataViz, makers of Documents To Go, a Microsoft Office editor app for mobile devices, has confirmed that they are developing an application for the iPhone. The application would allow for editing of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on your iPhone, or, presumably, your iPod Touch. According to a company representative, the application will likely be available in early 2009.
Documents To Go is popular smartphone software that runs on the Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, and Symbian platforms. Once installed, it allows for viewing and editing Microsoft Office files. Although you can’t do everything that you could do with Microsoft Office desktop software, the Documents To Go app allows for several editing techniques from the basic (cut/copy/paste, spell check, replace/replace all, etc.) to the more advanced (font effects, paragraph alignment, insert charts/tables/comments, cell formatting, track changes, etc.). Those more advanced formatting abilities are available in the premium version of the program, but both it and the standard version are paid applications.
However, it’s unknown at this time if the iPhone version of the Documents To Go application will function exactly the same as its predecessors. The company would not confirm anything else beyond the fact that they are indeed working working on an application and that they expect it to be available in early 2009.
(source)
Google started indexing scanned documents – A picture of a thousand words
A scanner is a wonderful tool. Every day, people all over the world post scanned documents online — everything from official government reports to obscure academic papers. These files usually contain images of text, rather than the text themselves.But all of these documents have one thing in common: someone somewhere thought they were they were valuable enough to share with the world.
In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn’t be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document– so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets us convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words — words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found. This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful.
While we’ve indexed documents saved as PDFs for some time now, scanned documents are a lot more difficult for a computer to read. Scanning is the reverse of printing. Printing turns digital words into text on paper, while scanning makes a digital picture of the physical paper (and text) so you can store and view it on a computer. The scanned picture of the text is not quite the same as the original digital words, however — it is a picture of the printed words. Often you can see telltale signs: the ring of a coffee cup, ink smudges, or even fold creases in the pages.
To people reading these documents, the distinction between words and pictures of words makes little difference, but for a computer the picture is almost unintelligible. Consider a circle. Should it be read it as a zero, the letter ‘O’, just a circle, or the ring from my coffee cup? People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process.
To see our new system at work, click on these search queries. Note the document excerpt in the search results, along with the full text presented after the ‘View as HTML’ link:
[repairing aluminum wiring]
[spin lock performance]
[Mumps and Severe Neutropenia]
[Steady success in a volatile world]
[original story: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/picture-of-thousand-words.html]
Microsoft Updates Live Mesh: Mac and Windows Mobile Clients
Today, Microsoft will release a major update for Live Mesh, its consumer oriented cloud storage and synchronization service. Among these updates are more granular permissions for sharing folders, better support for large monitors during remote connections, and support for drag and drop between the online desktop and local devices. Live Mesh is now also available for Mac OS X (10.5.1 or later) and Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft also announced the worldwide availability of Live Mesh.
Mac users can now sign in to Live Mesh, go to ‘Add Device,’ and click the “limited Mac Tech Preview now available link.” However, it looks like Microsoft is only releasing this as a limited beta so far and will only allow a limited (and unspecified) number of Mac clients to connect to Live Mesh at first.
You can find a more information on Live Mesh blog
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