Google Unveiled tools to set up Web sites

Google, already the world's most popular spot for finding Web sites, is aiming to become the go-to place for creating Web sites too.
The Mountain View-based company is taking its first step toward that goal Thursday with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company or attending the same class in school.

With only a few clicks, just about anyone will be able to quickly set up and update a Web site featuring wide an array of material, including pictures, calendars and video from Google Inc.'s YouTube subsidiary, said Dave Girouard, general manager of the division overseeing the new application.

"We are literally adding an edit button to the Web," Girouard said.

All sites created on the service will run on one of Google's computers.


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MicroHoo is Unnerving says Sergey Brin

At a recent event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin called Microsoft's bid for Yahoo "unnerving" and said the move imperils innovation on the Internet. Google also posits that the merger would be illegal. Maybe the merger could violate antitrust laws. Or maybe Brin likes being King of the Mountain, and doesn't want anything to threaten that. Oh, and Brin? Innovation will continue with or without MicroHoo.

The remarks came at an event for the Google Lunar X Prize yesterday. In an interview with the Associated Press, Brin said, "The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies. And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving."

That's pretty much what Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said in a letter published on Google's Web site shortly after Microsoft's takeover bid was announced. He wrote, in part, "This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."

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iPhone and Android are Internet clients

The iPhone and the Google Android platform, which was finally shown-off (sort of) in Barcelona this week, aren’t mobile telephones.

They are Internet clients.

Internet clients use exponentially more data bandwidth than ordinary digital phones, which use thin streams of compressed data. Maybe several exponentials.

Operators are thinking of expanding their networks into homes and offices to handle the extra load.

The Android clients shown in Barcelona aren’t much. What they mainly prove is that the specification can be built and deployed quickly.

While the Apple iPhone roll-out has gone at a predictable pace, with one vendor delivering specified numbers to a handful of networks, the Android roll-out will be far more helter-skelter.

That’s because the Android is designed to work anywhere, first on any GSM network and then, with a little tinkering, anywhere else

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Android: Google released a new version of the software development kit

Google released on Wednesday a new version of the software development kit for its open mobile platform called Android.

The new SDK has a new user interface, a geocoder that lets developers search for businesses as well as translate an address into a coordinate and vice versa, support for new media codecs, and code that lets developers create layout animations.

One thing missing is change to the telephony package, laments one developer on the Android Developer discussion on Google Groups.

"This is very disappointing, especially because we were told in the Android coding day in Israel that the telephony package will be updated soon," the developer wrote. "We still cannot detect the ingoing/outgoing call number or send DTMF tones properly." Prototypes of Android phones were shown at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

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Panasonic and Google plan to develp Internet TVs

Google and Matsushita's Panasonic unit are developing televisions that display Internet content such as videos and photos.
This spring Google and Matsushita's Panasonic plan to launch the TV.This TV will allow users to directly browse and access videos from YouTube, a video-sharing Web site owned by Google, and view Picasa Web Albums, a free online photo-sharing service from Google.
Panasonic Consumer Electronics Vice President Merwan Mereby said in the statement that"Panasonic's cooperation with YouTube and Google's Picasa Web Albums exemplifies our commitment to leading the natural evolution of the Internet and extending it to the high-definition television,"

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Google has filed for image text patent

The application, made in June 2007, was published on Thursday and covers "methods, systems and apparatus including computer program products for using extracted image text," according to Google.
"In one implementation, a computer-implemented method is provided," reads the abstract for the application. "The method includes receiving an input of one or more image-search terms and identifying keywords from the received one or more image search terms. The method also includes searching a collection of keywords including keywords extracted from image text, retrieving an image associated with extracted image text corresponding to one or more of the image-search terms, and presenting the image."
Google, which is already the proprietor of not only the most widely used image search facility on the Internet but also the leading video site, YouTube, has much to gain from being able to correctly interpret text held within images and video. Such a capability could, for example, be used to create more accurate keywords or for the automatic tagging of files and the identification of where a picture was taken based on signage in the background.

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