Last year Google introduced Google Street View as a component of Google Maps offering panoramic street-level views. Using the feature users can view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level.
In order to produce the imagery for the service Google mounts a special panoramic camera on a pole on top of the roof of a vehicle. Then, the car simply drives around town capturing the imagery as it goes.
Here is a video of a Google Street View cam car in action, moving along Interstate 10 near Palm Springs, California.
Tomorrow Tony Safoian will travel to San Fransisco to give a presentation at an annual developer conference, hosted by Google. Google I/O, as the event has been dubbed, is meant to bring together developers from all over the world to discuss the future of web applications. Developers will get together to discuss new horizons in developing next-generation web applications that make use of Open Source web technologies provided by Google, and the Open Source community.
In his presentation Tony will cover Google Apps, as it relates to customers in the SMB and Enterprise marketplace. Tony's presentation will highlight SADA's experience implementing Google Apps for organizations of all sizes.
Here is the Presently-based slideshow Tony used in his presentation today at the event:
For more information about the Google I/O developer conference visit the official website by clicking here
PC World also has a good article about the event. That article can be found here.
Thursday morning I was working in a few different Google Docs, gathering information and collaborating with my co-workers when I noticed something different about the next doc I opened up.
The document was in a fixed-width page view; that is the document essentially looked like how it will on the printed page.
Google quietly released this new feature (similar to print layout in Microsoft Word) that gives you the option of viewing your document in either the fixed-width view or normal or "plain" view (the equivalent of web layout in Word). To choose between either, just click on the View menu tab in docs.
Google is continually enhancing and improving Google Apps and updates are delivered without you having to install, patch or do anything. In my view, that's pretty neat!
Angelbeat is a series of seminars begun by CEO Ron Gerber. Where most tech seminars are focused on technology professionals and developers, and are full of indecipherable acronyms and techno-babble, Mr. Gerber's seminars are intended to reach out to business and enterprise users. The very people who are wondering, "How do I save money on IT?" In today's troubled economic climate this is a valid concern. The Angelbeat series takes place in several major cities over the summer, and brings together tech professionals, enterprise business executives, and end-users to discuss possible solutions to just this concern.
At the invitation of Google, SADA's own CEO and President Tony Safoian flew to New York for the Long Island Angelbeat event. Tony was attending with Google as a Google Enterprise Partner, and gave a presentation around Google Apps and how it can be used as an Enterprise solution, or software as a service.
To visit the Anglebeat website and learn more about upcoming events that may be in your area, visit their website (www.angelbeat.com) or click here.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked about computing in the cloud in a recent interview. Following is an excerpt from that interview:
Bartiromo: Mm-hmm. And, of course, Google has been getting all these newkiller apps, whether it's Gmail or Maps or, you know, spreadsheets.Ultimately is the game to compete direct, head on, with Microsoft?
Schmidt: Well, Google is actually trying to be an innovator, and we'realways concerned about competition. We have found that if we can simplyinvent a brand-new product that really solves a problem that really doesmatter to you, we can get your business, we can get your attention, we can getyour traffic and your customers or what have you. We're trying in a new thingcalled cloud computing to offer very powerful Web services that do the commonthings--e-mail, word processing and so forth--where the data's kept in thecloud, it's kept by somebody else, it's managed by professionals. You don'tneed to worry about where you keep all that information. We like that model alot. We're getting traction. It is a competitive threat to other companies,but we think it's a technological breakthrough.
Bartiromo: What about the corporate customer? I understand that there aretests going on right now. What are you hearing from that customer?
Schmidt: We're working with the corporate customers to do the same thinginside their networks as we do with consumers. Now, corporate customers arenot the same thing as consumer customers. Corporate customers have a muchhigher need for reliability, so we'll sign an agreement that guarantees acertain level of service. But then we charge for it. So that's a case wherepeople are willing to pay for something which is free without the level ofreliability. They also have other needs. They need greater security, for allthe obvious reasons. And they also need better integration with all of theother services that their companies have. This is a long process. It's not afast process. But it's very deeply valuable. And those customers we willhave for 20 or 30 or 40 years as they build into our model. We like thatmodel. It's an enterprise play. It's a business that I've been in for a longtime, and one which will ultimately be very, very lucrative through Google.
While modern computers are a fairly recent innovation, the concept of the computer is far from unique. The idea of a 'thinking machine' has been around for over 200 years. Some of the roots of modern computing can be found in the idea and designs for 'thinking machines' known as difference engines dating back to 1786. J.H. Muller was an engineer in the Hessian army who conceived the idea of a difference engine in a book published in 1786. Muller was never able to acquire funding to research or develop his concept, but the idea persisted. Thirty-six years later inventor Charles Babbage proposed the use of such a machine in a paper to the Royal Astromical Society. The machine proposed by Babbage used the decimal number system and was operated by cranking a handle. Babbage was able to secure funding to begin work on the project, but the British government withdrew their support after Babbage made no progress, but continued to ask for more money. Undaunted, Babbage continued to work on his designs and produced a design for the "Difference Engine No. 2" sometime between 1847 and 1849. This design was never realized in Babbage's lifetime.
The concept of the 'thinking machine' or 'difference engine' has influenced science, both actual and physical' for the past 150 years, and continues to do so through speculative fiction such as Steampunk. Real world interest in the Difference Engine has waned with the advent of computers and the Internet, until recently when the Computer History Museum in Mountain Veiw, CA built the Difference Engine No. 2 under the direction of guest curator Doron Swade.
Click the link below for more information about the Museum's Difference Engine, including a slideshow.
