Google Archive
Google Launches Patent Search Site
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Google has added another piece of search software to its arsenal, with the launch of Google Patent Search. The patent search site, launched as a beta on Wednesday night, is designed to sift through the approximately 7 million U.S. patents by a variety of parameters including filing date, issue date, patent number and inventor.
Google Open Sources Web Toolkit
Google is open sourcing the same software that helped to produce popular sites like Google Maps and Gmail. The company has released the Google Web Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 open source license. Independent developers can now use the toolkit to make and debug their own Java applications.
How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack
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"Google's PageRank algorithm assesses the importance of web pages without human evaluation of the content. In fact, Google feels that the value of its service is largely in its ability to provide unbiased results to search queries; Google claims, 'the heart of our software is PageRank'. As we'll see, the trick is to ask the web itself to rank the importance of pages."
SearchMash: Google Reborn
"It's quite a challenge really: how does the Number 1 search engine on the web rewrite its search algorithm and test its effectiveness without hurting its current results and user-experience during the testing process? Sergey Brin and Larry Page seem to have figured it out: create a new search engine, and do your testing there! SearchMash.com is the evolution of Google, and should things go right, what Google will (soon enough) become. It tests a range of new features and methods of bringing information to the users' fingertips in more ways than immediately obvious to the eyes."
Google Drives Mobility
Google released today a Java client for their Gmail service which works on all Java-enabled cellphones (mobile web-based client also available). Click through to see many screenshots from the app. Having used it for a few hours we conclude that it's very usable, very fast and it can even read and display images and MS/OOo attachments. More reviews on this app here and here. Additionally, now the Google-owned YouTube is preparing for a mobile launch within 2007, while Google is a major partner in the Opera Mini project. Version 3.0-beta was released yesterday. It now supports SSL, RSS feeds and content folding (which unfortunately does not play nice with OSNews' mobile page). Screenshots inside.
Google Launches Search Service for Computer Code
Google is introducing a new search service - strictly for computer programmers only. The Web search leader said late on Wednesday it is introducing Google Code Search, a site that simplifies how software developers search for programming code to improve existing software or create new programs. Google product manager Tom Stocky said the company is set to help programmers sift through billions of lines of computer source code using its familiar search box to uncover snippets of reusable software.
Google Open Sources Tesseract
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Google has announced the release of the source of an old OCR software called Tesseract in source. "In a nutshell, we are all about making information available to users, and when this information is in a paper document, OCR is the process by which we can convert the pages of this document into text that can then be used for indexing."
Google Releasing Package for the Office
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Starting Monday, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities and other organizations. Workers will be able to send e-mail with Gmail, Google's two-year-old Web-based mail service, but messages will carry their company's domain name. The package also includes Google's online calendar, instant-messaging service, and Page Creator, a Web page builder.
Andrew Morton Moves to Google
In a surprising move, Andrew Morton, the Linux kernel co-maintainer, announced that he is moving to Google and that he will continue being a Linux maintainer. A detailed article can be found here: "It is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit."
Interview with Google’s Chris DiBona and Greg Stein
Mad Penguin interviewed Google's Chris DiBona and Greg Stein at OSCON 2006 last week regarding their new Google Code offering.
Google Announces Code Repository
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Google has created a repository system for software development much like SourceForge. The system even checks new project names against SourceForge's database to ensure no one sets up conflicting names. Greg Stein, an open source engineer within Google and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, said: "We really like SourceForge, and we don't want to hurt SourceForge or take away projects." Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects.
Where’s My Google PC?
"Check out YouOS for 10 minutes, then imagine the same project on a billion-dollar budget. Now do you think the mythical Google PC that's allegedly being secretly developed in Silicon Valley - or in China or on a Ukrainian IRC channel - will become reality? It makes sense for Google to develop a Web-based PC. To be clear, a Google PC needn't involve a new gadget like the 'thin client' gear of the 1990s. Every computer in the world is capable of running a Web browser. We might not realize it, but we all already have Google PCs."
Google to Congress: ‘We Will Not Tolerate Net Abuse’
Google has strong words for legislators who are currently mulling over net neutrality issues: the company will take any perceived abuse to the US Department of Justice. Speaking at a news conference in Bulgaria, Internet pioneer and now Google VP Vint Cerf said that the company will be 'happy' if legislators ultimately opt to support net neutrality principles, but in the absence of such support, the company will take a wait-and-see approach. "If we are not successful in our arguments... Then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice's anti-trust division," he said.
Exploring the Google Web Toolkit
The recently released Google Web Toolkit is a comprehensive set of APIs and tools that lets you create dynamic Web applications almost entirely in Java code. However, GWT is something of an all-or-nothing approach, targeted at a relatively small niche in Web application development market. This article shows you what GWT can do and will help you decide if its the best tool to use for your web development.
Why Google OS Already Exists
"Let's face it. Google pretty much owns the Internet landscape. Unless something truly unexpected happens within the web community, I see no real indicator that they'll lose their market share anytime soon. This also opens them up to other online opportunities should they decide to pursue them. One such opportunity is believed to be the much famed idea of a Google OS. The rumors have been floating around back and forth for awhile now and many people believe that it's simply a matter of time. Well I'm here to tell you that this is never going to happen; at least not in a form that we might expect to see, that is."
Review: Google Spreadsheets
"Google Spreadsheets are in the 'sneak peek' phase. The two big questions seem to be a) why would anyone want to use a potentially non-secure spreadsheet with limited capabilities, and b) how will we refer to the primitive era before online spreadsheets, which revolutionized life as we know it (which, of course, leads to a related question: what kind of silver jumpsuit is most comfortable when you're crunching numbers?)?"
Google Earth 4 Beta for Windows, Linux, MacOS
Google has released a beta version of Google Earth 4, which runs on all the three major platforms. "We got so excited around here about the first anniversary of Google Earth that we decided to celebrate a bit early. Beginning today, you can download a brand new version, Google Earth 4. Running on OS X? Feel the love. Prefer Linux? Ditto. Yes, we're releasing simultaneously for PC, Mac (universal binary for full performance on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs) and for the first time ever, native support for popular Linux distributions." They have also seriously increased the amount of high-res images, so that now about 20% of the world's landmass is in high-res. Including my hometown, Warmenhuizen .
Google Releases Browser Sync Tool for Firefox
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Google has released a new tool which allows users to synchronize their Cookies, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks, History and tabs from their last session for the Firefox web browser. All of this data is uploaded to Google's servers continuously (and has the option to be encrypted), and then downloaded every time you launch Firefox on any computer with the extension installed.
Google Offers Spreadsheet Beta
Google is launching an online spreadsheet that will let you load Excel files and share documents online. Up to 10 people can work on the spreadsheet at the same time - the names of people editing and reading it will appear in a chat window. Users can save the documents to their Google account or export them as .csv, .xls or html files. Like the launch of Gmail, Google is limiting the number of new users for software - still in beta - to avoid overloading its systems. Cnet wonders, should Microsoft be worried?