Supergeekblog

Ok Jackson over at LifeHacker did a post on this, and it is just too good to pass up.  I know many (and I mean many) of us get request all of the time.  We pop over to google, do a search, and send back the first 2-3 links that look like they will do the trick.

Let Me Google That For You allows the user to see the search term you used, an animation showing how to hit “search on google,” with the funny quip “was that so hard”, and finally ending with the google results.

Warning – only use this with people who might have a sense of humor.

Mark over at the Geeks are Sexy has a nice writeup on how the German Government is warning people against Google Chrome.  It seems the big issue is having a single vendor with all of that information.  (Cal, email, search, and now web browser.)

Click here to read the GaS writeup.  (Great blog btw.)

This really isn’t much of a shock, but has taken the net by storm.  Google has released it’s own browser.  Before getting into any specifics, I will give some first impressions.  I use IE6 at work (requirement), and Firefox3 with various extentions.  (FF being my browser of choice at the moment.)  That being said – Chrome is impressive.  I have seen massive speed improvements in my normal sites.  (Google Reader being the most impressive speed difference, though I should have expected that.)

There has been some dissention out there.  Chrome is too basic, doesn’t yet support Extentions, new version of Firefox (3.1) will make this pointless, the Default EUAL, etc.  Some of these have a valid point.  On the other hand – it is a rock solid beta application.  How many other betas have we gotten from MS that crashed repeatedly.  FF has been pretty good about this in its newer versions.

Follow some of the links above for more information, I will also be posting some resources links below.  I would encourage people out there to try it for themselves and form their own oppinion.  I for one am looking forward to seeing what it becomes, though not ready yet to make a full switch from Firefox.  (The process per tab works really well.)

Google Chrome Comic Book

Google Chrome Download

ArsTechnica Review of Chrome

Whoa!  This is a little interesting.  Not exactly a non-reliable source either.  I can’t begin to fathom what exactly it could mean to the industry if this were to ever go through.  Of course, Skype would certainly be integrated into Windows.  That might be alright for a while.  I don’t really see much integration with eBay except for the mentioned integration with the Live Search.  Added exposure for certain.  Could also make for interesting integration of both Skype and Ebay into MSN Spaces.

One question that comes to mind is how much is eBay worth.  They just paid a bucket load for Skype and that was a minor drop in their total value.  This would almost certainly be a deal in the billions.  I also would like to ask why we haven’t heard anything else about this in the few weeks that they have been talking. Could be a lotta smoke and mirrors but, the nypost is normally a pretty good source for not following rumors around.  We’ll have to keep our ears to the ground and see if/what everyone else is saying.

I’ve been trying to access my gmail since at least 8:00 pm tonight. Each and every time, I get a server error. At first it was simply a generic error and now it is a “we’re working on the problem” error message.

So what happened Google? DDOS attack? Wouldn’t think that could take down a google service, but you just never know. Maybe Google has finally spread it’s server farms a little too thin. The rapid expansion of the Google services and usage could account for a minor glitch in the servers if the load became too high. Not very likely, but possible.

My guess? An upgrade gone wrong. Either that or somebody tripped over the fibre and pulled it out of the socket.

Washington Post published a list of the top web domains from February 2006.(via A Venture Forth)

A couple things struck me immediately.

One.  The top 4 sites are search engines.  When people want to find something online, they go to a search engine.  It only makes sense that the top sites would be search engines. On a side note, #’s 3 and 4, MSN and AOL should be thrown out as anyone who uses their ISP services is forced to use those sites as a homepage.  Thus, each and every one of their users counts as a unique visitor.  Kinda unfair if you ask me.

Two.  Never underestimate usage’s ability to boost traffic.  Ebay, Hotmail, MySpace are high user usage sites.  It makes sense that they are this high.  Side note here is that Google and Yahoo are not necessarily user usage sites as you don’t usually need to be a user of the site to use the main function.

Three.  The ability of a site like Myspace, Wikipedia, Blogger and the like to rise from nowhere is amazing.  Gives new meaning to the phrase “if you build it they will come.”

Where will these companies be on this list next year?  Will Google overtake Yahoo?  Will MSN?  Or will a darkhorse come out of the shadows and overtake them all?  Perhaps thatedeguy.com will be that darkhorse?  Ok, maybe not.

Google and Comcast our in talks with AOL in an attempt to purchase a minority share in the company presumably so they can leverage AOLs customer base to push new search and video over IP systems. Where is Apple in all this anyways? Didn’t they just release a video Ipod that could really use some content? Check it out here.

Google submitted a proposal to blanket 95% of SF with 300Kbps Wifi apparently for free. They claim they could do it with roughly 30 access points per square mile. I guess this pretty much explains google buying up large amounts of dark fiber all over the place. They need it to supply service to their access points.

These guys have put together a google maps hack that enables a notated disaster map for the area affected by Katrina.
http://www.scipionus.com/