Category: google

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Google announce the G1 Google Phone

Today Google announced the G1 Google Phone. The good news is that it will be available in the UK from T-Mobile in time for Christmas. I had anticipated that like many other devices, that the G1 Google Phone would be available in the USA first and a few months (or even a year later) it would appear here in the UK. If you recall Apple’s iPhone arrived in the US in June 2007 and did not appear in the UK until November!  However it is looking like that it will be available in the UK within weeks (if not at the same time) as the US version.

Not totally impressed with the look of the device, it does not exude style and class like the iPhone, but it does come with a touch screen and I am sure the qwerty keyboard will be useful for many.

Incidently why is it that I need to stop and think about how to spell qwerty?

I do have a T-Mobile phone and I hope that I might be able to upgrade to the G1 when it arrives in the UK later this year.

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Google Chrome

Google have gone and released a browser of their own, Chrome.

Google Chrome

Windows only at the moment, so I have not yet installed it.

Looks interesting.

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YouTube law fight ‘threatens net’

BBC reports on the implications of Viacom’s legal action on YouTube.

A one billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube threatens internet freedom, according to its owner Google.

Google’s claim follows Viacom’s move to sue the video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site.

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Google has eye on social web

The BBC reported on how Google is making it even easier for people to interact online.

Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.

Of course this means that educational and learning sites can use the same tools making it easier for learners to interact and engage with each other.

This may mean of course that learners from other “places” and “institutions” will interact and engage with each other.

Some institutions will see this collaboration as a “danger” or “cheating” and therefore block the sites. Whilst others will engage with this process and look at how it could impact on learning and enhance it and the changes that may be needed to be made to assessment models.

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“Think Jaiku is losing to Twitter? Wait till Android Devices Start Shipping”

Excellent blog article on though Twitter is winning the battle in the numbers game, Jaiku will win the war once Android starts shipping.

What if Google where to build Jaiku into Android as the standard phone Address Book? As soon as Android devices started to ship, Jaiku (whatever form it takes in the future) would gain hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of users rapidly. This isn’t as crazy an idea as it sounds. As I’ve posted before, Jaiku was originally conceived as a location and status aware address book; many Nokia users who have the Jaiku S60 client application installed already use the service in this way.

Read the full blog entry, makes for interesting reading.

Personally I much prefer Jaiku over Twitter, the RSS and the comments allow for me a much deeper richer experience, more importantly as well it allows for interactivity much more easily than Twitter.

Of course I don’t like the 504 errors (who does) and that bird, but hopefully with a day off tomorrow (what am I going to do) Jaiku will get better and we’ll see less of them.

Follow me on Jaiku.

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Dimmed Icons

So there I was updating my Mac mini (which to be honest has been gathering dust on my desk for a while now, well no screen, no keyboard and mouse, it’s difficult to use…. certainly not easy to switch on and do stuff.

Mac mini

So how do I configure it , well I am currently using VNC/Apple Remote Desktop combination to control it.

On the Mac mini I have configured it through Apple Remote Desktop to allow others to access it.

System Preferences > Sharing

Check the Apple Remote Desktop checkbox and add a password by clicking Access Privileges…

System Preferences

On my other Mac, I don’t have the full version of Apple Remote Desktop, so I am using Chicken of the VNC which is VNC software (you can tell that from the name), and as Apple Remote Desktop is VNC compatible, means I can control my Mac mini from another Mac on my network, and the Mac mini doesn’t need a monitor or a keyboard or even a mouse!

So once I started it, I set about installing updates, it was running 10.4.6, so I upgraded to 10.4.11 (and will probably install Leopard on it, when it arrives this week (oh yes I have finally got round to ordering Leopard, family pack will upgrade the Mac mini first, but will wait on my other Macs until I am happy that all my peripherals and applications are Leopard friendly)).

However I noticed that all my OS X icons in Finder were dimmed or faded and couldn’t understand why, well more importantly I must have done something to it and couldn’t remember what!

Well a quick search on Google found this Apple Discussions thread.

I like to be able to view the normally hidden files and folders. However when this is enabled, the majority of icons show as faded.

Ah well, I must have done something in Terminal to change Finder to view hidden files, but couldn’t remember how I did this, or where I found out to do this.

So back to Google and this revealing MacWorld article.

Using a simple Terminal command, you can work with all the files on your machine from the Finder. Open Terminal, type this command, and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Well this is going to show hidden files, so as you might guess…

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

..will hide hidden files again.

So started Terminal, typed the command and then rebooted the computer to restart Finder and now all my icons can be seen in all their multitechnicolour glory.

So why have I been messing about with upgrading my Mac mini, well I am going to put it under my TV and use it as a media centre.

I have ordered a 15m cat5e cable so I can also place my new 802.11n Airport Extreme under the TV as well, so not only will the Mac mini be connected (by gigabit ethernet on the Airport Extreme and alas 100Mb ethernet on the Mac mini. It should be faster than 802.11g though.

I will also be able to connect my EyeHome to the Airport Extreme by ethernet as well.

Pity it’s an old G4 PPC model, so not only just 100Mb ethernet also no remote!

Well if it works out as I hope and it works well, I will upgrade to a new Intel Mac mini which comes with the Apple remote…

Or get an Apple TV!

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Dealing with all that e-mail

An excellent presentation from Merlin Mann on how to deal with e-mail and have an inbox with zero e-mail in it!

One of the key messages, is don’t check your e-mail, deal with your e-mail.

  • Delete or Archive
  • Delegate
  • Respond
  • Defer
  • Do

Well worth a watch especially if you have more than fifty unread e-mail in your inbox.