Google

What if Apple really opened up the iPhone?

Will Android beat iPhone?

Speaking yesterday at the Emerging Communications Conference at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, Rich Miner, Google group manager for mobile platforms, predicted that sales of Android-based devices will outpace those of the iPhone.

In other words, the iPhone will be unlike the iPod-iTunes combo when it comes to dominating a market.

Miner uses the Microsoft licensing and open-source models to make his case. "When you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone," Miner said.

In … Read more

A cure for the "cancer within open source": the OSI approves the Affero GPL

One of open source's biggest failings has been to extend its relevance into the Software as a Service world. The OSI has finally corrected this with the approval of the Affero GPL.

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source company Funambol, has been the most ardent crusader for development and approval of a license like the AGPL. In a blog posting, he talks through the importance of the AGPL, and identifies perhaps its biggest opponent: Google.

In GPL v2, those who ran open source software in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environment, and modified the open source code, were not required to return the changes back to the community....For me, this has always been one of the worst risks for open source oblivion. If you can take and you do not give back, defeating the copyleft concept, you kill open source. The ASP loophole is the cancer of open source....

Start-up Xcerion offers a peek at the clouds

Those who want a glimpse of cloud computing's future might want to check out the work of a little-known Swedish start-up.

Xcerion has a browser-based environment known as icloud that looks a whole lot like a Windows or Linux desktop. There are files, folders, icons, and applications, but the data lives inside the cloud. Although some bristle at the notion of a "cloud OS," because such products inevitably still require a Linux or Windows-based PC, Xcerion's icloud does put all the kinds of things you do in a desktop operating system, running inside a browser window. … Read more

Viewing Google Sky through a browser

Google unveiled a browser version of its Google Sky application on Thursday for people who don't want to download the Google Earth software.

The browser version allows you to zoom in and out and pan around the celestial bodies, search for planets and galaxies and view the sky through infrared, x-ray, ultraviolet, and microwave views.

There are also galleries of some of the best shots from the Hubble telescope and others. You can also listen to podcasts and look at historical maps of the sky.

The backstory on the app is that it was done by staff engineers and … Read more

Forget Yahoo, Microsoft should acquire AOL

After today's announcement that AOL has acquired Bebo for $850 million in the hopes that it will be able to capitalize on the upswing in social networking, I had a thought. Knowing that AOL is trying to get a deal done with Yahoo and the company owns some solid properties, why doesn't Microsoft forget about Yahoo for a while and acquire AOL?

Sound crazy? If so, consider the fact that AOL has quickly become one of the largest competitors to Microsoft in its attempt to acquire Yahoo and at the same time, it's barely standing on the backs of sound editorial content from Weblogs, Inc. and now, social networking -- two areas Microsoft currently has no influence in.

In essence, the deal for AOL would be a good one for Microsoft and could actually help it in its negotiations for Yahoo. Here's why:… Read more

YouTube's expanded API not for everybody

UPDATE 3-15-08 12:20 p.m.: Some of the information in the story is found in YouTube's Frequently Asked Questions section

Before you start building new applications around YouTube's video player, it might be wise to check out the Terms of Service agreement and the Frequently Asked Questions section.

It has a lot to say about what you can or can't do--particularly when it comes to any thoughts of making money. First up, the No.1 video-sharing site says plainly "the intent of the API is for noncommercial use. "More specifically, the TOS prohibits using … Read more

Feng Shui and the art of data centers

Large multinational companies are building data centers designed to flow with their environment. There's something you probably didn't expect to hear five years ago.

Microsoft, for instance, is building a data center in Ireland in which the server rooms and other facilities will be cooled with devices called air side economizers, which pipe outside air inside.

"It uses fresh air aggressively to keep your building cool," said Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, in a phone interview. "The ideal scenario is that if Ireland continues to develop wind power and hopefully wave power, you … Read more

The secret to Google's recruiting success

Much has been written about Google's intensive hiring process (including its mind-vaporizing interview questions), and how it manages to land the cream of the engineering crop. But yesterday some friends of mine got to see it firsthand.

I was in downtown San Jose for a company event and was waiting for some colleagues over at the Marriott. They were a bit late and apologized, indicating that they would have been on time but had run into a swarm of beautiful young girls pouring out of the Fairmont Hotel. My CEO asked what they were doing and were told,

We work for Google.… Read more

Google testing service to let publishers manage ads

Updated 9:25 a.m. PDT Thursday with more details from Google blog.

Google is testing a new service called Ad Manager that will give Web publishers more control over ads that appear on their site.

Google Ad Manager is a "free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their ad inventory," according to a Google blog.

Publishers participating in the beta test launched on Thursday can sell their own ad space, run ads from other online ad networks, or carry Google ads. The ads can include text, display, or … Read more

FaveBot intelligently hunts down content you're into

FaveBot is a service that keeps an eye on whatever keywords you give it to pull up related items from the Web. If you're familiar with Google Alerts, the idea is similar. In Favebot's case, you can take any keyword or set of keywords and apply it to the types of content you're looking to keep an eye on, be it photos, videos, blog posts, or podcasts. There are nine categories in all, and the system is designed to serve it up like a river of news with the most recent items appearing on the top.

What'… Read more