Web Development

A little nip-and-tuck has gone on at Google Search recently. As we mentioned yesterday in the Googleholic, Google has been testing a slight rework for their search interface and we had a Javascript workaround to see it.

The rework is now evident when visiting Google.com. Nothing too major has gone on and it still closely resembles your favorite search location, but with some added freshness. Along the top of the page when logged in, users are now presented with a list of Google services along with their Google Account services including Web, Images, Video, News, Maps, Mail and a drop down to reach Calendar, Docs, Groups, Blogs, Books, Patents, Notebook, Web History and My Account.

A little freshness has been added to the styling of the page, where a few slight tweaks have been made. There is now a gradient box above the results for an added feeling of depth surrounding the Results numbers. Google has now also pushed the page listing on the bottom to align on the left instead of the center, and added a Google search box, again in a gradient box at the bottom under the results. It’s nice to see these subtle changes, they add a refreshing little perk to the Search site and give it a more polished feel.

Posted by Mark Callaghan, Software Engineer

http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/

Though you may think of us as simply a company with a big search index, Google uses MySQL, the open source relational database, in some of the applications that we build that are not search related.

We think MySQL is a fantastic data storage solution, and as our projects push the requirements for the database in certain areas, we’ve made changes to enhance MySQL itself, mainly in the areas of high availability and manageability.

We would love for the some of these changes to be merged with the official MySQL release, but until then we felt strongly that anyone should have access to them, thus we have released the changes with a GPL license for the MySQL community to use and review.

What have we added and enhanced?

The high availability features include support for semi-synchronous replication, mirroring the binlog from a master to a slave, quickly promoting a slave to a master during failover, and keeping InnoDB and replication state on a slave consistent during crash recovery.

The manageability features include new SQL statements for monitoring resource usage by table and account. This includes the ability to count the number of rows fetched or changed per account or per table. It also includes the number of seconds of database time an account uses to execute SQL commands.

More details:

• SemiSyncReplication - block commit on a master until at least one slave acknowledges receipt of all replication events.
• MirroredBinlogs - maintain a copy of the master’s binlog on a slave
• TransactionalReplication - make InnoDB and slave replication state consistent during crash recovery
• UserTableMonitoring - monitor and report database activity per account and table
• InnodbAsyncIo - support multiple background IO threads for InnoDB
• FastMasterPromotion - promote a slave to a master without restart

The current patches are for version 4 of MySQL, with version 5 support coming shortly.

We look forward to hearing from the large MySQL community.

If you have ever experienced data loss on your computer, please put your hand up in the air now. Keep your hand raised, if the data you lost were so critical, that it almost made you pull the hair out of your scalp. Most of us who have been using computers for an extended amount of time have probably more than likely experienced hard drive failures or complete death, at least one time before.

But why does it keep happening and why does it seem to happen so often? We cannot really blame it on the hard drive companies, as they are restricted by certain technological constraints. At the same time though, consumer demand for storage capacity and speed is increasing and that adds extra pressure and stress, on current mechanical drive technology, as spindle speeds increase and transfer speeds get faster and faster. You are not likely to experience hard drive death if you go out and buy a drive today, but after long periods of use or without adequate cooling, you should probably start preparing for disaster.

As hard drives become bigger and bigger (Hitachi has a 1TB drive on the market now), they also become heavier. Add four 750GB Seagate drives to your case and you are talking over 3kg (or about 7 pounds) of extra weight. With more platters being squeezed inside regular 3.5-inch hard drives to increase capacity and provide faster transfer speeds, the drives are operating at higher temperatures – and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out heat is the worst enemy of any electrical component. We do not need to mention (crap, too late!) IBM’s previous and quite shocking “Deathstar” range of drives several years ago, of which almost all died consistently after only about 2,000 hours when used without active cooling.

Several years ago companies started releasing USB pen drives which have reinvented the way stored data could be transported. USB pen drives (and other flash products, such as memory cards used in your digital camera) use NAND non-volatile flash memory, which is able to store and retain data even without power, making this type of memory very versatile. Pen drives were expensive at first release but now you can pick up a 1GB drive for just a few dollars, and flash memory prices are constantly decreasing. Not too long ago, some smart chap had the idea of replacing the aging hard disk drive bound with problems such as heat, size, weight, noise and mechanical failure with solid state technology. Instead of using a hard drive with moving parts, why not create a new type of drive, which is solid state and more reliable, using flash memory chips?

It has been said that, within the next ten years, SSD (Solid State Drives) will replace the aging hard drive, and in the interim HDD / SSD hybrids are likely to increase in popularity as the storage technology of choice. Today we get our first look at SSD technology as we check out Team Group’s 16GB 2.5-inch notebook solid state disk. At 16GB the drive is not a monster when it comes to total storage capacity, but as we take a look at this pre-production product it should give us a good introduction to the potential of SSD technology.

Saved from webworkerdaily.com

Last week brought us news regarding Google’s future plans for their online application suite. At the Web 2.0 Expo CEO Eric Schmidt said Google will release a PowerPoint-type presentation application, slated for this summer. Then, VP Douglas Merrill announced on the official Google blog that the company has acquired videoconferencing software from a Swedish startup.

What else is in the works? Phil Sim of Squash makes some guesses after his participation in a survey of Google Apps Premier users. In that survey, Google explored his interest in a variety of applications. Beyond the basics already included in the suite, Google asked about project and contact management, file storage, and online discussion groups, suggesting they are thinking of incorporating these into their suite.

Combining this information, we can make some guesses at what you might find in Google Apps in the future.

1. Presentation. Through their acquisition of Tonic Systems, Google will offer an alternative to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, as well as to the many web-based presentation systems under development. That category includes SlideShare, Zoho Show, Thumbstacks, and Spresent.

2. Project management. Watch out, 37Signals: the survey Phil completed suggests that project management is on Google’s to do list, something that would likely compete directly with 37Signals’ popular Basecamp service.

3. Contact management. Gmail’s automatic creation of contacts from emails works really nicely. If you use Google Apps for your Domain, you can already share contacts across users. It’d be great to also see some Highrise-like capabilities — taking notes, tracking interactions, and managing tasks related to people you’re working with.

4. File storage and sharing. We regularly cover online file storage and sharing apps here at Web Worker Daily because it’s a core step in managing your online work. Google Blogoscoped ponders how it might look and work.

5. Online discussion groups. Google Groups already exists but it’s not tied into Google Apps. I’d like to see a unification under the Google Reader interface where you could browse your mail, RSS feeds, and relevant discussion groups all in one quick keyboard-accessible screen.

6. Wiki. Google acquired JotSpot on Halloween of 2006 and immediately closed it to new sign-ups. News has been sparse, but in January the JotSpot developers announced an upgrade for existing customers and said it will be the last version produced before migration to Google’s infrastructure. Perhaps Google will combine project management with the JotSpot wiki capabilities — wikis provide a reasonable alternative to dedicated project management apps for some teams.

7. Video chat. Google announced its acquisition of Swedish start-up Marratech’s video conferencing software, suggesting that they intend to use it internally only. No one would be surprised if Google incorporated it into the Google Talk client to support video chat, though.

8. Web meetings. Marratech offers capabilities beyond videoconferencing to include e-meetings and collaborative whiteboards along the lines of what WebEx is known for. Here’s hoping if they do offer web-based real-time meetings that it works better than WebEx.

What else would you like to see in Google’s online office suite? Check out this Google wish list discussion to get some ideas. I’m voting for online image editing — which seems like a fairly likely addition, given Google’s Picasa offerings.

The most recent StumbleUpon Toolbar (v. 3.05) includes a new feature called StumbleThru, which allows users to stay on a specific web site while stumbling through pages that they might enjoy. Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Wordpress, The Onion, and CNN are some of the sites currently enabled (as are the .edu and .gov domain names).

It’s a cool way to find those YouTube videos or Onion articles that will appeal most to you. But I agree with Rafe Needleman - StumbleUpon should release this functionality through an API and let sites include a “Stumble” button. If the reader is a StumbleUpon user, it will take them to a page on the site that they’ll like. If they aren’t, it should take them to a random page on that site and can prompt them to become a StumbleUpon user to get more customized results.

Creating a link to take readers to a random post is a good idea and would only take a couple of minutes to code in WordPress (we’ll do it for fun this afternoon). If StumbleUpon gives away the functionality, my guess is a lot of sites would integrate it to increase page views.

Google is very near enacting a filtering service that would prevent copyright content from being uploaded to video-sharing site YouTube, CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday.

Visit: Schmidt says YouTube ‘very close’ to filtering system

When it comes to freelancing, one of the biggest challenges can be finding work. Even the most successful of freelancers will experience a lean month here and there, so it pays to have as many sources of potential work as possible. That’s why we’ve compiled a monster list of job sites from around the net. There is sure to be a site in here that is listing a job tailor made for you!

Visit: The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites

By LOUISE STORY and MIGUEL HELFT

Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.

The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.

For months, Google has been trying to expand its foothold in online advertising into display ads, the area where DoubleClick is strongest. Google made its name and still generates most of its revenue from search and contextual text ads.

DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996, provides display ads on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online as well as software to help those sites maximize ad revenue. The company also helps ad buyers — advertisers and ad agencies — manage and measure the effectiveness of their rich media, search and other online ads.

DoubleClick has also recently introduced a Nasdaq-like exchange for online ads that analysts say could be lucrative for Google.

“Google really wants to get into the display advertising business in a big way, and they don’t have the relationships they need to make it happen,” said Dave Morgan, the chairman of Tacoda, an online advertising network. “But DoubleClick does. It gives them immediate access to those relationships.”

The sale brings to an end weeks of a bidding battle between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has been trying to catch Google in the online advertising business, and the loss of DoubleClick would be a a major setback.

“Keeping Microsoft away from DoubleClick is worth billions to Google,” an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, Jordan Rohan, said.

Acquiring DoubleClick expands Google’s business far beyond algorithm-driven ad auctions into a relationship-based business with Web publishers and advertisers. Google has been expanding its AdSense network into video and display ads online and is selling ads to a limited degree on television, newspapers and radio.

The sale also raises questions about how Google will manage its existing business and that of the new DoubleClick unit while avoiding conflicts of interest. If DoubleClick’s existing clients start to feel that Google is using DoubleClick’s relationships to further its own ad network, some Web publishers or advertisers might jump ship.

A highflying stock in the late 1990s, DoubleClick was an early pioneer in online advertising and was one of the few online ad companies to survive the burst of the dot.com bubble. In 2005, DoubleClick was taken private by two private equity firms, Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity, in a deal valued at $1.1 billion. Since then, the company has sold two data and e-mail advertising businesses and acquired Klipmart, which specializes in online video.

The company generated about $300 million in revenue last year, mostly from providings ads on Web sites.

DoubleClick’s chief executive, David Rosenblatt, said a few weeks ago that a new system it had developed for the buying and selling of online ads would probably become the chief money maker within five years. The system, a Nasdaq-like exchange for online ads, brings Web publishers and advertising buyers together on a Web site where they can participate in auctions for ad space.

DoubleClick’s exchange is different from the ad auctions that Google uses on its networks because the exchange is open to any Web publisher or ad network — not just the sites in Google’s network. Offline ad sales have been handled through negotiation, but the efficiency of online auction systems has caused some advertising executives to consider using auctions for offline ads in places like television and newspapers. DoubleClick’s new exchange could function as a hub for online and offline ad sales.

PC World magazine has ranked the major technological inventions of the past few decades that have changed the way we live and work. To be considered for the list, a product not only had to be superior in quality, it also had to be life-changing in some regard.  The editors considered hundreds of products through the decades before coming up with the top 50.  Each item was rated on popularity, staying power, degree of innovation, and overall influence on the world of technology.  Though some items on the list had a short lifespan due to the nature of an ever-changing industry, they are still acknowledged because their influence continues to be seen in many of today’s commercially-available products.

Apple has seven mentions on the list, with two in the top 10. From the early model Apple II at the dawn of the personal computer era in the 70’s to the ubiquitous iPod so many of us tote around today, the list covers a broad spectrum of technology through time. Some of the products that have been around for a while such as Tetris (1985) are still used today, while others have been replaced by newer, faster versions of themselves such as the Nintendo Entertainment system from 1985. One thing they all have in common is that they have left indelible marks on the technology timeline.

Here are the top10 on the 50 Best Tech Products list.

1.  Netscape Navigator (1994):   In 1994 Marc Andreessen launched Netscape Communications, offering his new Navigator Web browser (based on Mosaic) to the world. Finally, users outside of the academic world would get a taste of HTML, and nothing has been the same since.

2.  Apple II (1977): While the Apple II was by no means the first personal computer ever made, it was unarguably the first one that actually did something useful–not to mention the machine itself looked a lot cooler than anything else on the market. It’s safe to say that this machine really ignited the personal computing industry.

3.  TiVo HDR110 (1999):  With the ability to pause, rewind, and record anything on the air, TiVo changed the way in which people watched television. No longer would people be using their cumbersome VHS machines, or fear missing out on a favorite TV show with this innovative breakthrough.4

4.  Napster (1999): No, not the Napster that is now strictly regulated and subscription only, but the one started by Shawn Fanning that sparked a national copyright upheaval. Napster will not only go down in history for its groundbreaking peer-to-peer technology aspect, but also for bringing record labels to their knees by forcing them to recognize the growing presence of the digital music world.

5.  Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (1983): Lotus was the PC’s first ever critical application—a huge milestone for the PC community. It served as the standard spreadsheet application until it was superseded by the rise of the Microsoft era.

6.  Apple iPod (2001): iPods were not the first portable music players by any means, but they were however, the first ones to simplify the way in which we can enjoy our portable music. Sleek in design and convenient to carry, the iPod has changed the way we procure and record music.

7.  Hayes Smartmodem (1981): In 1978, with $5,000 in hand, Dennis Hayes launched what would become one of the most noteworthy tech companies of the ‘80’s. With the invention on the Smartmodem, Hayes personally spearheaded the telecommunications revolution.

8.  Motorola StarTAC (1996): The first mobile phone to establish that design matters as much as functionality, leading to today’s profusion of stylish cell phones.

9.  WordPerfect 5.1 (1989): An incredibly innovative application, WordPerfect laid down the groundwork for future word processing programs. It endured for many years until Windows became the prominent operating system for business and personal computers alike.

10. Tetris (1985): Alexey Pajitnov’s simple take on the video game was a groundbreaking achievement for the gaming industry as Tetris was one of the first games that required actual brain use. After 20 years, Tetris continues to inspire different variations and knock-offs of this basic but challenging game involving falling bricks.
PC World revealed “The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time” with Netscape Navigator (1994) coming in at number one. The online-only article is live now and can be found at (http://find.pcworld.com/56992).

Microsoft billionaire BILL GATES is planning to travel into space, his friend and current space tourist CHARLES SIMONYI has revealed.
The announcement was made by cosmonaut FYODOR YURCHIKHIN during a talk to journalists from the International Space Station, where software tycoon Simonyi is spending the next nine days.
Simonyi paid $25 million (£13 million) for his experience and claims Gates the world’s richest man - is preparing for his own space mission.
Yurchikhin says, “Charles said that Bill Gates is also preparing to visit space. So the next time someone will be with Bill Gates. For me this is the biggest surprise of our flight.” Space Adventures, which has organised all space tourist trips to date, claims not to have had any contact from Gates - but Russian space agency Roskosmos has confirmed the tycoon recently visited its cosmonaut training centre near Moscow.
Spokesman IGOR PANARIN says, “For now there are no negotiations on taking part in a tourist flight. We have not had any official request from Mr. Gates.
But if Mr. Gates expressed interest we would help him.”