Obstructed Graph » Google http://robertschultz.org A blog managed and maintained by a software engineer living in Fresno, California. Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:13:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Google I/O and their Announcements Day 2 http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/21/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-2/ http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/21/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-2/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 18:34:04 +0000 Robert Schultz http://robertschultz.org/?p=1033 Day two of Google I/O, and they had quite a bit more of exciting announcements I wanted to share. I think Google I/O has shaped up to be a great milestone with Google and what they’re trying to push to prepare for Chrome OS. One thing that I noticed was the lack of Chrome OS news, but maybe we’ll hear more soon.

Android 2.2 “Froyo”

This is the new version of the Android operating system.  This thing looks sweet.  Lots of improvements over previous version, flash 10.1 support, JIT compiler which makes it approximately 5x faster, over the internet music syncing, new Ad engine (sounds familiar to iAds), and more.  Reading about the new Android is making me want to ditch my locked down iPhone each day more and more.

Google TV

Yes!  I’ve been waiting for someone to do this forever and now Google is getting into this arena.  If you have ever used Boxee, you will understand what Google is trying to do with Google TV.  Imagine being able to use their new Google TV device and still get your cable but alongside that installing web widgets to stream from Pandora, or getting Twitter streams or even viewing your Flickr photos.  I think this is going to really revolutionize the cable industry and if Google some how negotiates with the TV studios to do subscription services bye bye cable.  I’ve discussed this before and have recently ditched cable TV.

Like I mentioned previously, Google is on a roll and am excited to try out some of their new products they announced both web development stuff and possibly Android in the future if iPhone 4 doesn’t cut it.

]]> http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/21/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-2/feed/ 0 Google I/O and their Announcements Day 1 http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/19/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-1/ http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/19/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-1/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 18:58:54 +0000 Robert Schultz http://robertschultz.org/?p=1022 Today was day one of Google I/O, and they made some pretty neat announcements.  I will highlight a couple here that have relevancy with web development.

HTML5

In the HTML5 space they are really pushing this with new apps they are going to spotlight in their Chrome Web Store.  They demonstrated some apps they are already in development like TweetDeck and the game PLants vs. Zombies.  I suspect this is a precursor for their Chrome OS and making all apps web-based.

Google App Engine for Business

They announced some extended features for their cloud app framework App Engine called App Engine for Business.  You get better scalability and support as a business user.  They also are teaming up with VMware to allow you to deploy your app to other cloud infrastructures or even on-premise.  This sound very cool.

PubSubHubbub

Updated their feeds API to utilize the new PubSubHubbub protocol, which will allow you to get feed notifications in practically real-time.

Google Font API

This was sort of interesting.  They released a collection of open-sourced web fonts that anyone could download and use with their new font API.  I assume this API utilizes new CSS3 features which is pretty smart move by Google.  An example of this would be the following:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
    <style>
      body {
        font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;
        font-size: 48px;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Making the Web Beautiful!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Again, very cool and smart of Google.  And I also believe this is another step towards Chrome OS.

Google Wave

They also announced today that Google Wave is open to everyone.  And that everyone who uses Google Apps has access to wave as well which will be a cool collaboration tool to use for teams or companies.  I am definitely going to use it internally.

]]> http://robertschultz.org/2010/05/19/google-io-and-their-announcements-day-1/feed/ 0 Google Fiber for Fresno http://robertschultz.org/2010/03/10/google-fiber-for-fresno/ http://robertschultz.org/2010/03/10/google-fiber-for-fresno/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:41:29 +0000 Robert Schultz http://www.robertschultz.org/?p=756 If you haven’t heard, Google announced an experiment to implement ultra fast high speed fiber networks to trial locations located in the country.   I am very excited about this as our city is getting involved in this matter and is participating with an RFI in the works.  Also there is a Fresno Facebook Page which is gaining tracking pretty well with everyone who is supporting Google coming to Fresno.

Here’s to hoping we’ll be riding the fiber waves soon via Google.

]]> http://robertschultz.org/2010/03/10/google-fiber-for-fresno/feed/ 1 I’m Buzzing about Google Buzz http://robertschultz.org/2010/02/11/im-buzzing-about-google-buzz/ http://robertschultz.org/2010/02/11/im-buzzing-about-google-buzz/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:32:22 +0000 Robert Schultz http://www.robertschultz.org/?p=733 Google Buzz was released the other day and I’m really liking it.

One of the original things that attracted me to Facebook, was the ability to easily import data from my social networks to display to others.  Be it information automatically being imported from Youtube or Hulu, but also if I wanted to share a link it would give a decent amount of metadata to my friends.  But the flip-side of that is the constant noise and junk people put out there.  And the fact it’s taken me 2 years to gain the 100+ friends that I have.

With Google Buzz, they did something very nice.  Everyone who is your friend in Gmail automatically becomes your friend in Buzz.  No more spending years to find friends, send friend requests, etc.  Plus they support a lot of my social networks automatically with I’ve already filled out in my Google Profile.  So when I make a Twitter post it automatically comes through into Buzz.  Sweet.

So is this the end of me having to keep both HootSuite and Facebook open during the day to get my news and information?  Possibly.  I’m in Gmail all day as well anyway since it’s my main email client.  There is still some polishing up to do but overnight I think this has created major threats to Facebook, considering they have yet to integrate FriendFeed into their application for real-time social meta importing.

]]> http://robertschultz.org/2010/02/11/im-buzzing-about-google-buzz/feed/ 0 Google Sidewiki http://robertschultz.org/2009/09/23/google-sidewiki/ http://robertschultz.org/2009/09/23/google-sidewiki/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:52:16 +0000 Robert Schultz http://www.robertschultz.org/?p=559 Google recently released an update to their toolbar called Sidewiki.  What Sidewiki does is allow users on a particular website to comment and see other comments as well.  I think this is a stab in the back to other commenting platforms people use on their websites and blogs, like Disqus and JS-Kit.  What they’ve essentially done is killed the whole social aspect a lot of blog owners have built on their blog.  What if I don’t want Sidewiki enabled for my blog?  Can I set a flag to disable it?

Also, what if there are comments that I don’t want approved.  Say users write derogatory comments about a website do you have authority to remove these comments?  These are all things I’m curious about upon further inspection of this new product and I’m sure others are as well but I thought it was worth noting.

]]> http://robertschultz.org/2009/09/23/google-sidewiki/feed/ 1 Google Chrome OS and Gdrive http://robertschultz.org/2009/07/25/google-chrome-os-and-gdrive/ http://robertschultz.org/2009/07/25/google-chrome-os-and-gdrive/#comments Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:52:55 +0000 Robert Schultz http://www.robertschultz.org/?p=209 There has been a lot of talk recently regarding Google’s new OS called Chrome OS.  One of the things I have not seen mentioned was how this OS will integrate with storage options.

For example, the features of this new operating system mentions that it will be a lightweight windowing system running on top of a linux kernel.  Basically for application developers, the real magic is going to be web-based applications since the Chrome browser will pretty much be the desktop in my opinion.

Well remember the old talk about Google’s Gdrive (or Platypus)?  That news pretty much went away but I can see this making a come back now their operating system is being released.  Think about it like this: since this operating system is made to be very lightweight and heavily driven by web applications how would you want to store all of your data?

In the cloud!

To me it only makes sense that Google releases Gdrive with a full API to allow web application developers to integrate their web apps with it between Chrome and the cloud.

I haven’t heard much on this but it’s been on my mind since I heard about Chrome OS.  Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to be a logical move that Google could make.

Update: Others seem to think the same thing especially seeing Google’s recent change to Google Docs.

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