Tag Archive for 'google'

Blekko launches

Ulysse Sabbag | November 2, 2010

blekko.jpg

Blekko has launched Sunday and people are wrongly wondering whether it is a Google killer.

This summer, I wrote a tiny article stating an important fact (concerning Blekko). It does not want to kill Google. It does not want to compete with Google, it is trying to improve search.

Henry Blodget, from SAI thinks it is doomed. It may be but his arguments are false.

1. For the most part, search isn’t broken.

Blekko is not meant to fix it.

2. When search IS broken, the problem is usually not Demand Media content. It’s because the question you’re asking generally isn’t well-suited to being answered by algorithmic search.

Man or Ash? People ask what they feel is the most intuitive query. Yes, they adapt their questions to algorithms but anyway, this argument is wrong.

3. Normal people haven’t the faintest idea what “slashtags” are or why they would ever want to use them.

Normal people want to ask Google: where is my grandson? If change is innovative, people will adapt.

Now, what does doomed mean? Doomed like Cuil?

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Google is developing self-driving cars

Ulysse Sabbag | October 10, 2010

It everything works as they say, this would be one great, great innovation.

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Google celebrates John Lennon’s birthday

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

Lennon, known to me as the second best song-writer of the 20th century would have been 70 today if M. Chapman controlled his emotions.

The nice thing is that Google put a YouTube video instead of its logo, on the front page, featuring an animation with Imagine as a soundtrack.

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Google Goggles available on iPhone through Google Mobile App

Ulysse Sabbag | October 5, 2010

What a joyful surprise.

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“Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense.”—Eric Schmidt

Ulysse Sabbag | September 28, 2010

Right.

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2010 acquisitions: Google 23—Microsoft 0

Ulysse Sabbag | September 28, 2010

Dear Microsoft,

You failed to buy Yahoo! but you got to rise up and fight. Two things could be happening: all this money Google used to buy other companies, you use it on R&D? Do you? If not, you must know that if you fail to renew, you will fail. Heavily.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is catastrophic—yet.

Read more.

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Google finally gives $10m to Project 10^100 winners

Ulysse Sabbag | September 24, 2010

Read about the projects, see who won more than the others.

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Google, Bob Dylan and Instant

Ulysse Sabbag | September 11, 2010

Since Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter ever, I had to link to this video.

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Google unveils Instant search feature

Ulysse Sabbag | September 8, 2010

Instant results, as you type.

Read more.

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Google Chrome: enhanced UI and more

Ulysse Sabbag | September 2, 2010

The one reason I wasn’t using Chrome was because of its design. It felt cheap and unnatural in front of Safari.

Google designers have made a pretty good job by adding this… chrome effect to the navigation bar and I like it.

This new version comes along Chrome’s second birthday.

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Priority Inbox: Gmail fights inbox overload

Ulysse Sabbag | August 31, 2010

A pretty neat new feature was announced by the Gmail team at Google.

Priority Inbox sorts your mail in a smarter way: it puts the important mail first, then your starred mail and then everything else.

Read more.

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Eric Schmidt, thoughtul quotes from last week

Ulysse Sabbag | August 7, 2010

Google’s CEO Mr. Schmidt said some quite interesting stuff over the past week at the Techonomy conference in the United States. Selection.

“If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,” Schmidt said, “we can predict where you are going to go.”

“The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.”

Read more.

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Google Chrome gets a Spotify extension

Ulysse Sabbag | August 7, 2010

spotifychrome.jpg

That’s pretty cool.

It works by highlighting the name of an artist, as pictured above.

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Yet another search engine: Blekko

Ulysse Sabbag | July 21, 2010

A new search engine will be launched soon. Its name is Blekko and it wants to win. Or, maybe a little victory in one of the most competitive markets in Internet world: search.

The first thing you want to ask to Blekko’s CEO Rich Skrenta is: why? Why do you want to face Google? Well, his answer is quite simple.

So let’s just get this out of the way: there is no such thing as a Google killer. No company is going to play David to their Goliath and slay them with a well-aimed stone from a slingshot. Google is here to stay.

In my sense too, Google is here to stay. So, what is Blekko going to do? They’re going to focus on one category: categories.

With a technology called slashtags, on Blekko’s search, you can refine your search very easily: search for Apple /date and you’ll have the most recent Apple results; search for search Inception /twitter to get Twitter’s results, because Blekko is using Twitter’s API. Google can do similar search filtering yet, it’s a little bit more complicated.

Will they find success? We shall wait, and see.

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Google acquires Metaweb, gets smarter

Ulysse Sabbag | July 17, 2010

So, what is Metaweb? The answer lies in this video.

Why is Google buying it? They want a deeper understanding of the Web. How cool could this be if it’s extended to Google Search? Really cool. Basically, Google wants to be able to answer your questions, before you see the search results. Yet, it already can—try: when is barack obama’s birthday—but it wants to do it in a smarter way.

In the future, when you’ll try to search: actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar, you will see the answer before the results. That’s about it.

 

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