Google image search gets a ’swirl’
On Tuesday, Google Labs added the newly developed ‘Swirl’ tool to focus on finding more relevant pictures on the internet.
Swirl tool automatically groups similar images into categories presented on results pages.
Aparna Chennapragada, the Google product manager said, “What Image Swirl does is it really organizes automatically image search results into groups and sub-groups.”
He further added, “It’s not just the face, the color, the visual features of the images; we look inside the image and ask how they relate to each other on a pixel level.”
The new product from the internet search giant Google, Swirl, uses algorithms, metadata, and facial recognition software to distinguish between structures, places, people, and even time of day in digital images.
Online image search has traditionally delivered results pages lined with thumbnail pictures that people sift through individually.
Google unveils SMS service for Africa
On Monday, internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled its new service designed to provide information via SMS text message to mobile phone users in Africa. This service from the company is unveiled keeping in consideration the lowest rates of internet penetration in Africa, as the company acknowledged its latest blogpost at tits official blog.
The California based company’s blogpost on this latest development read, “At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home.”
“It’s important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty,” Google added
On one hand as the internet penetration rates are the lowest in the African continent, Google cashed on the latest findings that revealed the world’s highest mobile phone growth rate in the region and that the mobile use on the continent is six times higher than Internet penetration.
According to Google, the new service, Google SMS, will be available first in Uganda. This service can be used to get information, via SMS, on a wide range of topics including health, agriculture tips, news, local weather and sports etc.
Google also announced that it is launching a service called Google Trader, another of its SMS based application.
Comcast to offer wireless Internet service
Comcast is all set to roll out its wireless Internet service from Tuesday in Portland, Ore. The company plans to add three other cities by the end of the year.
Comcast would b the first major cable operator to roll out its very own, wireless broadband which would be offering up to 4 Megabits per second speed and would be carried over the 4G network of Clearwire Corp., where it’s offered.
Elsewhere, the service will use Sprint Nextel Corp.’s 3G network.
The Comcast High-Speed 2go Metro service, on promotion for $49.95 a month for a year, would include Comcast’s wired Internet home service and a Wi-Fi router. The regular price for it is about $73 a month. The national version, using Sprint, costs $20 a month more.
About its plan to add other cities, Comcast plans to offer the service in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago later this year.
US Raises Doubts Over Chinese Bid to Control Web Access
The United States has voiced concern over a new rule that makes it mandatory for all computers sold in China to be equipped with internet filtering software.
Chinese authorities have announced that from July 1 this year all personal computers sold in China must be rigged with internet filtering software. Moreover foreign computer makers must make sure that their products are shipped into China with the requisite anti-pornography software. The Chinese government says the move is directed at checking unlimited access to pornographic material on the web.
However a US official in Beijing expressed concern that the orders issued by the Chinese government were in fact directed at limiting the exercise of online freedom. The Chinese move has also come under fire from global trade and rights groups who believe that the orders are yet another attempt by Beijing to tighten internet control. Richard Buangan, the spokesperson for the US embassy in Beijing told the media that on Friday, he had a preliminary meeting with the representatives of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as well those of the Ministry of Commerce to lay out concerns of United States on the matter.
IE8 gets flak for being ‘still slow’
Microsoft’s newly launched web browser Internet Explorer 8, IE8, has received mixed response from users across the globe. The software giant released the newer version of the Internet explorer on the 16th of this month. The newer version has been highly appreciated for its wider range of navigational and security features. On the other hand the users have also criticized its compatibility and still slow speed.
According to the results of The Web Standards Project’s Acid Test 3, IE8 users are encountering its compatibility problems with Web standards such as CSS, HTML4 and XHTML. The Acid 3 test has revealed that IE8 is not up to the standards delivered by other browser software from Google and Mozilla.
This inconsistency could further pose problems for developers who rely heavily on these standards for ensuring that it can run across many different browsers and on different other OSes as well.
Another problem faced by the users is regarding the speed of the new web browser. Microsoft might have claimed it to be the fastest web browser; however the fact remains that IE8 remains the slowest amongst the top five in the market.
According to the test findings, Google’s Chrome led all browsers and is tested to be more than four times faster than IE8. Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0.7 came second, followed by Apple’s Safari 3.2.2 for Windows and Opera Software’s Opera 9.63.
The technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg, also criticized IE 8’s performance in an All Things Digital post. He wrote, “Microsoft claims IE 8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and sports sites. I repeated the test in IE 8, and in Firefox, Safari 4, and Chrome. In every case, IE 8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly than most of the other browsers, and in most cases, it came in dead last.”
Also Microsoft has not confirmed any dates as to when will the company make available the final version of IE8 for Windows 7, but it is expected in the next public release for Windows 7.
The newly introduced navigation and security features do get the wider applause.
Microsoft adds shortcuts, security to new browser
Microsoft Corp. is all set to release a new version of Internet Explorer on Thursday, IE8. the newer version, as promised by the software giant, will have added features meant to speed up the common web surfing tasks. It is also aimed to enhance the browser’s security measures as those of its major competitors.
Microsoft’s Internt Explorer, commonly known as IE, got a tough competition in recent years from Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple Inc.’s Safari web browser, Google Inc.’s Chrome, the Norwegian entrant Opera. Each of them have been using speed, security enhancements and new features to grab the larger share of web surfers’ growing time online. However, Microsoft clealry remians the mot dominant element, yet after the no. of rivals shot up, the company has been constatly upgrading to maintain its dominance.
Internet Explorer 8 or IE8 is Microsoft’s first major web browser update since its IE7 in August 2006. the company has promised to take care of a no. of annoying daily encounters.
IE8 has reduced the need to copy text from one page and pasting it into the other, thanks to a new icon of list of these actions, labelled by Microsoft as Accelerators. It also allows the users to add new Accelerators to reflect their own search, e-mail and other e-habits.
In an effort to keep related tabs linked, any new tab opened in IE8 would now be tucked with the source page. Also if a single tab crashes in a web page crashes, it wouldn’t bring down the whole of the web page.
The software giant has now added some new privacy features. These including a mode for web browsing that will not store the web browsing history, nor will it small data files called cookies.
IE 8 wil also allow its users to block ads from companies having potential risks like the ones which track web surfing habits across a number of sites, commonly called behavioral targeting.
Google to target ads based on Web surfing habits
Google Inc. on Wednesday announced that the company will use its surveillance of Web surfing habits to figure out which ads are best suited to each individual’s interests. Google’s this practice is likely to shed light on how much the internet giant has been learning about millions of its users around the globe.
Google gets most chunks of its earnings from the advertisement business, showing ads along with the search requests and other content on a web page. The newly announced program would analyze people’s favorite web sites and tag most relevant ads to it.
The ads are all set to debut within the next few weeks. These will initially appear on Google’s YouTube and other sites that belong to Google’s ad network.
The new approach would build on the technology that Google got last year in a USD 3.2 billion acquisition of the Internet ad service DoubleClick Inc.
Google’s this attempt is to catch up with its two major rivals, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. who already have been customizing ads based on the past activities of specific web browsers.
Google software bug shared private online documents
Google confirmed that a software bug has exposed the documents ought to be privately stored in the internet giant’s online Docs application service. The problem was amended by the weekend.
Reportedly the bug has affected only a mere 0.05 per cent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service that provides text-handling programs as services on the Internet.
Google Docs Product Manager Jennifer Mazzon wrote a message at the firm’s website on Saturday. He said, “We’ve identified and fixed a bug where a very small percentage of users shared some of their documents inadvertently.”
He apologized for the incident saying, “We’re sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users’ concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we’re treating this very seriously.”
While the trend towards cloud computing is growing at a phenomenal pace, the loophole came as Google and other internet firms try to tempt people to rely on applications offered online instead of buying software then installing and maintaining it on their own systems.
Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft urged not to censor search
In an attempt to protest against Cyber Censorship, the rights groups on Friday called on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft requesting not to censor their web search engines for the 12th of March, the World Day Against Cyber Censorship.
According to the letter sent to the search engine giants by Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, “World Day Against Cyber Censorship is a day to advance and celebrate a free Internet as an open window to the world and denounce the attacks made on the free flow of information online.”
They further added, “We urge you, on March 12th, to champion the vision of the Internet as a free space for everyone, regardless of nationality or geographic location, and fulfill the idea of a truly worldwide Web — even if just for one day.”
China has for long been exercising a strict control the Internet usage, blocking websites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
In the recent years, many tech giants including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, have been accused of involvement in building the “Great Firewall of China.”
Google has been severely criticized for acting in accordance with Chinese government’s policy to filter Internet searches.
YouTube topped 100 million US viewer mark in January
According to comScore, the number of US internet users watching videos at YouTube hit a record setting monthly high, reaching a hundred million in January.
The total number of videos watched online in the month of January but the citizens of US mounted to 14.8 billion, up by 4 per cent from the previous month. As reported by comScore, 91 per cent of the growth was contributed by videos on YouTube. The Google owned YouTube, ranked as the top US online video website had 6.4 billion hits for the videos in January.
Ranked second was Fox Interactive Media, for the second highest number of videos viewed, 552 million. Fox also owns online social-networking website MySpace which accounted for 54.1 million of those online video watchers.
Yahoo! Emerged as the third favorite online destinations amongst the US citizens accounting for 374 million videos watched.
Google emerged as the clear winner according to the comSource report. Reportedly, 147 million US Internet users watched an average of about101 online videos each in January. Out of these, 102 million preferred using Google-owned sites. And there again YouTube topped accounting for the hefty ninety per cent share.
Microsoft websites were ranked fourth with 30 million viewers.
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