Google's modesty, a pro blogger's nightmare!

Google's 2006 Annual Report warns shareholders of the risks it faces from competition (Microsoft and Yahoo) and also its inexperiences in acquisitions. It says that the future results may fall below expectations. This modest disclaimer could be more of a nightmare to the blogosphere than the shareholders of Google Inc.

Reading this report reminded me once again of the 2000 dot com bubble burst and the resulting bankruptcy of large corporations like WorldCom.

Google also underscores that Internet user traffic tends to be seasonal and its rapid growth has masked the cyclicality and seasonality of its business. - Donna Bogatin, ZDNet

If anything like the 2000 incidents is to be repeated and should Google run out of advertisers, The worst affected would be those who have taken to blogging full time and live on the income they earn from blogging.

One might argue that Google is not the only Ad network. But considering the size, reach and technology of Google in comparison to other ad networks, I don't think anybody else could survive if Google can't.

It would be a good idea to have a backup in case of an unfortunate eventuality. » Continue reading

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Carry your software applications and data around the world with Internet operating systems

After Google and Microsoft, a Swedish software company Xcerion follows suit in the race for online productivity tools, albiet with a difference. Instead of creating applications for the web, Xcerion provides a platform for developers to create applications that can run on any computer with any operating system and any supported browser (Internet Explorer & Firefox for the time being)

"What Skype did for telephony, we want to do for software development," says CEO Daniel Arthursson. "We're enabling the 'Long Tail' for business software."

Xcerion has been working for the last five years on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) and development platform that replicates the desktop computing experience from inside a Web browser providing applications and data over the network. It sits as an abstraction layer atop a real operating system like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.

Watch it in action and you'll see a visual representation of the threat it poses to Windows: Double-click on the application and the familiar desktop interface appears inside the browser window. Expand the browser window in full-screen mode and the Windows desktop vanishes beneath it. Of course the XIOS environment could just as easily look like the Mac OS desktop or something else entirely. This is what Microsoft feared Netscape would do, turn its main asset, the operating system, into middleware. - InformationWeek

XIOS has already been released for limited beta testing and might be out for public in the third quarter of 2007.

The service will be free and Xcerion will make money from advertisements which they will share with application developers as they don't intend to develop applications themselves.

Read Thomas Claburn's indepth review and analysis of this new revolution on InformationWeek. » Continue reading

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Cast your ballot in the comfort of your bed

Are you so busy that you don't find time to cast your valuable vote in the election for President, Prime Minister, Chief Minister or the Mayor? Or are you too lazy to go there and wait in the queue for hours before you get your chance to choose your prez?

It might not be long before you could cast your ballot online on the Internet, from the comfort of your home, at a time of your convenience. For citizens of Estonia this dream has already come to reality. This small Baltic country is the first to conduct national elections with internet balloting available to all voters. England, France, Holland and a few other countries have had trial or small scale votes. The state of Hawaii will offer internet voting in local elections later this month.

This would definitely increase the voter turnout and eventually result in better governments. But there seems to be a problem - bigger nations worry that an internet-based balloting system cannot be reliable and secure enough to safeguard democracy's most fundamental processes. Alright, but as Tarvi Martens, project manager for Estonia's e-voting project, puts it "You trust your money with the internet, and you won't trust your vote? I don't think so." » Continue reading

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The British would-be-monarch lives in the past!

Prince Charles on a recent visit to the United Arab Emirates for the launch of a public health campaign at Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi was quoted as asking one of the nutritionists at the center:

"Have you got anywhere with McDonald's? Have you tried getting it banned? That's the key,".

Well what on earth does he think he is doing? Tommorow he might say that eating beef is unhealthy, get em banned! Why doesn't he get them banned in his own country? We are living in a free world. We may at our discretion decide what's good and what's bad for us. He might be successful in getting them banned in undemocratic countries but not in his own country. It is quite natural of him, having royal blood flowing through his veins, that he thinks about controlling people's diet. » Continue reading

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Apple iPod to replace 'black box' on airplanes

Since the time iPod was first introduced to replace walkmans and discmans, it has evolved from just a digital audio player to a photo viewer to a portable video player and has found various applications besides these like data storage etc. SciFi.com has a list of Top 5 Creative Uses for Your iPod. The iPod has yet again found a path-breaking application in aircrafts.

According to a report by Flight Global, Apple iPods will soon replace the 'black box' with a 'white box'. US light aircraft manufacturer LoPresti SpeedMerchants plans to integrate the iconic 'white box' iPod into its Fury piston aircraft's avionics systems to serve as a digital data recorder.

The iPod along with suitable software works like a hard disk and can record more than 500 hours of flight time data.

Did Steve Jobs ever have an idea about what applications his invention will find? » Continue reading

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Non-reason for readers to unsubscribe from feeds

Darren Rowse recently conducted an "open mic" survey to understand why people unsubscribe for a blog's RSS feed. However, looking at the results of the survey here, I feel quite a number of people had got the question wrong.

The title of Darren's post "What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?" clearly indicates that the question here is why people unsubscribe "from a blog's RSS feed" and not the blog itself. RSS feeds, according to my knowledge, are usually subscribed to through aggregators like Bloglines, Newsgator, Google Reader etc. These aggregators check for new content on these feeds and informs the subscriber when there is an update available.

Darren's survey shows that almost 11 percent of the people unsubscribe from feeds due to infrequent posting. Yes it would bother if you had bookmarked the blog to check for new content regularly. But why on earth would they be bothered by infrequent posting when they don't have to do anything to check for new content on that blog?

It could be that the 29 odd people would have either got the question wrong or just needed a reason to post a comment. » Continue reading

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Blogger features request (wishlist)

Blogger is one great blogging platform that any newbie can be comfortable with. The new Blogger is a giant leap forward from the old Blogger in terms of features like layouts, labels, post comment feeds, feeds by labels, blog security etc. However, there is lots more that Google needs to put into Blogger to make it comparable with Wordpress, Typepad and other high end professional blogging platforms. The Blogger Wishlist is not the place where I can list the features that I need on Blogger. I rather list them here so that others too can see what blogger needs badly and add to it what they feel is necessary.

Here they go...

1. Advance posts: Ability to write posts in advance of them being published so that they go live at a preset date and time.
   
2. Non-post pages: Ability to add non-post pages like about us, contact us etc.
   
3. Upload non-image files: So that CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files can be uploaded right on to the blog-spot server. There could be even more uses.
   
4. Label Archives: Instead of searching labels so that we can directly link to the particular label feed from the label archive page automatically using the auto-discovery feed links for the page.
   

This is all that I have on my mind right now. Will keep adding as and when they crop up in my mind. You too can leave your requests here. » Continue reading

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