Is Google better?

Apparently Google clearly dominates the online search market. Ok, from the simple user's point of view this is not that evident. I use it, you use it... According to Business Report, Google is lead with 48%, Yahoo follows with 24% and MSN is the third competitor with 14%. That's more than Yahoo 's and MSN's market share added up. And that's huge. (BusinessWeek stated almost the same numbers last year)

But this share is assured by several factors: one of them is the fact that "Google is better". Dirk Lewandowski, Henry Wahlig and Gunnar Meyer-Bautor at the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf have decided to analyze the search engines by looking at the database update rate.
Their study included the main search engines - MSN, Google and Yahoo. The 38 sites were chosen among portal, news and lifestyle sites. The conclusions were that Google succeeds to index daily the highest number of updated pages, while MSN is the only one capable of indexing all the changes within 20 days. Yahoo has the most chaotic update mode, in both frequency and number of pages. (still, the results are stated to be true only for the german version of these SE)

Google does not only hold the first position in our overall ranking. When focusing on the indexing patterns this engine is superior since the first look at the results is impressive: No other search engine updates so many sites as constantly fast as Google.

Some interesting infos raised, when Opera 8.5 went free: Google is an important partner of Opera Software - because of the little search gizmo located in the browser, that's defaulted to Google's search engine, and for every search that originates from this browser, Google will give something back to Opera Software. That's how business goes.

The rumors turned out to be true: Google has started a beta program for secure wireless communication (now just in San Francisco, later, NY will follow). Nobody knows what Google will do next, but apparently has to do something with the company's image.

NASA announces that Google will be an active partner of the agency ("09.28.05 - NASA Takes Google on Journey into Space"). That's a very positive image element. People will say: "well, if NASA trusts Google, then Google must hold some pretty interesting technologies. You can trust it, even up there, in space!".

Google hires people for [tam-tada-dam...]: GoogleTV. That's nice. Another good image there. And for the media part of the information, Google indexes a lot of TV shows on it's own servers. Yes, that's right: Google records lots of these shows and lets you play them online on Google Video.

Also, Google dominates in machine translation tests. Google scored the highest in Arabic-to-English and Chinese-to-English translation tests conducted by the National Institute of Science and Technology. The other two contestants were: IBM and University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute.

Google has also lots of cool features, and, the most important thing, ever adding or improving them (maps.google.com, Google Desktop Search, Google Earth, Google Hello, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Translate, etc.). But the most accessible and useful of them remains simply Google. It has a clean start page, no ads, no lots of links, no banners. For the ones who want a more portal-like approach: Interactive Google.

So, is Google better? I think, at least for the moment, it is. Comments anyone?

Openness - the way things should be

GNU is all about openness, freedom of thinking, of using products, of modifying those to suit you best and all about sharing with the world. GNU took the hacker's way to the next level: learn/experience - engineer - share. "Open <*>" must manifest itself in a community. If the community is healthy, the product will be healthy too. We saw this in GNU products (GNOME, GIMP, and GCC), Linux (core and all the distros), KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla (Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) and all those great/successful product that benefit from a cool community (a ton of those products).

Google started with openness in mind. Google is free. Gmail is free. Google-Maps is free. GDS is free. Google-Talk is free. They also bought great commercial products and shared them for free: Picasa, Blogger, Hello, Keyhole/Google Earth. They have great, free products and the company image benefits from this large users community.

Now, the biggest software company (aka Micro$oft) decides that closed doors is not in fashion today. Those days are over. It started about 1.5-1 year ago with MSDN TV (videos taken to developers in Redmond about some of the products Microsoft is working on). Now they have blogs for every product, blogs of the employees, they have Channel9 (great site), they have pages for the products in beta stage, they share a lot of resources for the new technologies introduced... No accounts, no passwords, no passports. Just information.

In the last few months I've experienced an explosion of info originating at msdn.com or microsoft.com, all aimed at creating a real community. In the past years PDC was covered by few general articles, which gave us a bulrush image about what's going on. Now, great videos exposing featuring APIs, SDKs, Frameworks, products or technologies are posted on Channel9.

Great job Microsoft. Keep it up. Open even more.

Opera is now FREE

Opera Software had permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download - completely free of charge at http://www.opera.com.

Opera fans around the globe made this day possible. As we grow our userbase, our mission and our promise remain steadfast: we will always offer the best Internet experience to our users - on any device. Today this mission gains new ground.

Jon S. von Tetzchner
Co-founder -- CEO

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.

MP3 Player? Anyone?

MP3 players are pure fashion these days. Everybody has to get one.

After iPod nano, that slick player from Apple (in fact, people just buys it because of it's looks :) ), one small contender appears mobiBlue DAH-1500i.



It's a fantastic gizmo:

• only 24 mm³ (24x24x24)
• 1GB Flash (it has also a smaller brother that has only 512MB)
  
• tiny full graphical OLED display
• mp3/wma player
• FM radio (there is also a version of 1500i that has no FM radio...)
  
• built in microphone
• equalizer (20 presets)
• SRS algorithm
• USB 2.0 connectivity
• you can see it as a Flash-Drive
• many colors (many versions: red, orange, blue, white, black...)
  
• the price is also tiny (129$ for this full featured model, and 99$ for the 512MB model)

You can read a full review at PC Magazine.

mobiBlue? Anyone?

For real?

I don't know what to believe of this. To me it seems like a scam or something. Too many "the renowned prof. dr. - you've never heard of him name - has a running prototype of the incredible - put a very big number here - storage device that will change the world. Soon his invention will enter the mass production", and you'll ever wander "what happened with that incredible - put the same very big number here - storage device that they should have been released many years ago???".

Today it's time for...."tam-dada-dam"...:

WORLD'S FIRST CONSUMER WIRELESS SUPER
NOTEBOOK COMPUTER, THE AtomChip® SG220-2

The system is further detailed as:

• Processor: 6.8GHZ CPU AtomChip® Quantum® II processor
• System Compliance: Two Operating Systems (Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional and Linux®)
  
• Memory: 1TB Quantum-Optical non-volatile RAM (NvIOpSRAM-SODIMM 200-pin)


• Storage: 2TB non-volatile Quantum RAM (NvIOpRAM-ATA IDE)
• Optical Drive: DVD Super Multi
• LCD Display: 12.1” WXGA (1280 x 800, 16:10) TFT Glare Type LCD display with 1.3 Mega pixel CMOS camera
• Video & Graphics: Two Integrated graphic controllers [Intel®855GME internal graphics, support Intel® DVMT (Dynamic Video Memory Technology) and AtomChip® DVM (Dynamic Video Memory)]
• Communication: 10/100 Base-T LAN on board, MDC Fax/Modem V.90/V.92 on Board, 802.11a/802.11b/802.11g WLAN, Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100/2200BG/2915ABG network connection, WiFi, Bluetoth, GPRS -witantennatoth antena, CMOS camera with USB interface, Mega pixel resolution CMOS image
• Pointing Device: Synaptics touchpad with 4 way scrolling button
• Application Launch Key: E-mail, Internet, Capture, WLAN
• LED Status Indicator: Power, Suspend/Resume, Battery Charging Status, Quantum Storage Access, Num Lock mode, Caps Lock mode, Scroll Lock mode, WLAN Lock mode
• Keyboard: 3.0mm travel, inverted-T, 88keys with 2 windows key (Internet & Microsoft For Connectivity)
• Interface Ports Front Side: One 4-in-1 card reader slot (support SDIO/SD/MS Pro/MS), Audio line out, Stereo Microphone-in
• Interface Ports Left Side: LAN port, Modem port, SVGA‚–out port, One Type II PCMCIA slot (support CardBus), 1394A port (mini jack)
• Interface Ports Right Side: USB 2.0 ports x 3
• Interface Port Rear Side: DC-in, Kensington Lock / Audio: Built-in two stereo speakers and Built-in Microphone
• AC Adapter (Input: 100-240V AC, 50-60Hz, 1.5A. Output: 20V DC, 2.5A, 50W)
• Battery: 6 cell Li-lon battery pack. Battery Charge: 3 hrs charge time to 100% capacity while system off and 4 hrs charge time while system on. Battery Life: Approximately 8 hours for AtomChip® Quantum® II processor and 3 hours for 4 x Intel® Pentium® M processors 1.7CHz (??? and 1.7GHz x 4 = 6.8GHz ???)
• BIOS: AMI, Support PnP, password, Bootable from USB and DVD
• Power Management: ACPI 2.0 compliance
• Smart Battery System Support
• Security: Kensington Lock
• Size: 320.0(W) x 242.0(D) x 22.0(H)mm/28.0mm (front/back)
• Weight: 1.9kg(when fully equipped with AtomChip® Quantum® II processor) and 2,20kg(when fully equipped with 4 x Intel® Pentium® M processors)
• Packing Accessories: Quick Guide, Support CD (Driver, Utility, Manual), AC Adapter, Power Cord, Battery Pack, BOSE Headphone Music System with noise Cancelling.

And, to be sure,

Due to a change of management of the company Computechnics Atom Chip Corporate SDN BHD (Malaysia), devastating flood in the region in the Fall of 2004 and other reasons the contracts with the suppliers of components were not concluded and serial release of SG111 and SG220 was not begun.

Star Wars: Republic Commado

Ok. There have been more than 6 months when this game showed up in the stands. You've probably played it (in march there aren't so game launches), but I've decided only two days ago to try it. It sounded nice on GameSpot and wanted to give it a run, just to be sure that I don't miss one of the thousands Star Wars games (kind of a joke, though it yields a little bit of truth).

To be short, this game has it's own vision of the SW Universe but remains consistent with it. It's not about spaceships/flying through space game, and it's doesn't feature any Jedi or either the Force's presence.
It's a team tactical 1st person shooter. I'm inclined to say it has something to to with Halo (life system, weapon system), Star Trek: Elite Force 2 (team based action), Star Wars: Battlefront (same frenetic action), Full Spectrum Warrior (good tactical control).

You're "38"/"three-eight" (more like a "Master Cheef"), and together with "07", "40" and "62" you form a fearsome Republic Commando. You get to shoot dudes throughout the game (placed somewhere in the Clone Wars), to save the great Republic from these bad-bad factions.

Here are some of my points on this game:

• + it comes on two CDs (it came as a surprise because you rarely see a game on just two CDs)
• - it has an awful loud sound when the interface pops up (autorun/launcher program)
  
• + cool graphics:
  
  • + nice bumpmapping
    
  • + nice specular highlights
    
  • + good explosions FXs
    
  • + very cool softshadows (even if sometimes they project awful on some surfaces)
    
  • + impressive lightmapping rendering and detail
    
  • + good dynamic lighting effects (lights/shadows projections, though if you try to observe in detail these lights over let's say some rocks, at night, you'll be surprised of the strange effect..)
    
  • + bloom effect
• + very good level design
  
  • + the levels look great, are very detailed, not that repetitive
    
  • + you cannot get stuck on a level
    
  • + easy to get a sense of the environment
    
  • + the health units have convenient locations
    
  • + the objectives are very clear and you don't have to run from here to there only to open a door
    
  • + the missions are pretty straight forward
    
  • + plenty of monsters to kill
    
  • + though heavily scripted, the action pacing is perfect
    
• + very good models & animations
  
  • + cursive and very convincing animations
    
  • + motion capture in all commando's animations (true to the real commandos's movement)
    
  • + even when recharging, some interesting sprites appear
    
  • + good variety of monsters with good animations and design
    
  • + you can shoot and rip limbs from your enemy, lots of them show partial damage (flying helmets, pieces of armor)
    
  • + good weapons design
    
• + excellent game design & programming
  
  • + the Halo like energy shield & life are simply "the way it should be" (it gives you a little bit of slack, a little bit of courage that you'll not be punished for every hot-headed decision, but it doesn't let you cross the line too much)
  • + Revive! Great idea!
    
  • + game over only when the hole party is dead (very cool)
    
  • + very good own forces AI (impressive I'd say: they fight for themselves, they watch their own back and others, they heal themselves, they revive their comrades)
    
  • + very easy to command to your party the actions you want them to performs or to perform the way you want them
    
  • + nice hud display (easy to read infos and easy to give commands to your party)
    
  • + commando chat :)
    
  • + very short & not that difficult learning curve
    
  • + not so many guns, but very efficient (4 own guns + 1 monster's gun)
    
  • + different grenades for different monsters
    
  • + you can shoot with turrets and some of the monster's weapons
  • + ragdoll physics (good physics, ragdolls will stay until you face the opposite way or shoot them to destruction, nice effect of the explosives on ragdolls - either dead or alive)
    
  • + extra content means mostly "making of RC". Cool!
  • - twice, in the game, one of your team just stuck into the level/objects. Nothing violent, it seemed that he would want to respond, but never left that place again. Had to restart the level... :(
    
• + impressive sound
  
  • + very good Star Wars like themes
    
  • + in tone with the action
    
  • + very good sound FXs
  • - sometimes the sound traps trigger earlier than they should (like: your player says: "watch those rocket turrets!" and you're like: "where dude?...." and after you take a corner see a rocket turret and you've figured it :) )
    
• + gameplay experience
  
  • - pretty linear
    
  • + very intense
    
  • + you'll not have the opportunity to boor
    
  • + very good feeling when you play the game (feel like one elite trooper engaged in a cruel war)
    
  • + feel very confident of your chance of success and good to feel your comrades around
    
  • - very short (only three campains)
    
• - weak multiplayer
  
  • - no bots
    
  • - few game modes
    

New Linux distro?

These last years have really taught us about openness/open-source/free-software etc.
I've been onto Linux since first distributions of Slackware, back in 1996... I've been testing different Linux or Unix distributions every now and then, mainly testing their progress.

• Mandrake impressed me in 1999, when it shipped out of the box with i586 compiled kernel and packets. Then I saw that an easy Linux distribution doesn't really have to be named redHat to be stable and reliable. And what about that really cool installer, way over redHat's Anaconda. Version after version they improved their config tools (hardDrake, drakeConf), distribution packages and introduced nice small features - back then there were some of them where very innovative and cool - like: lilo graphical mode, graphical console, graphical console with a cool background, graphical booting with progressbar indicator, nice little graphical fdisk utility even in the installer, etc.
• I've tried SuSE in 1998 and in 2001 and I was disappointed (first contact was with a German version of SuSE and it was painfully hard on me and in 2001 Mandrake or Slackware seemed to me as a better choice). Last year I've tried version 9.1 and was very impressed. The only drawback it had: little support for developers, witch was very bad.
• I've never really liked RedHat or Fedora simply because of the multimedia glitches and various licensed technologies problems (as no mp3 decoding capabilities, no ntfs support)
• Slackware was as always more of a distribution for experts: with it's sober installer and minimalist media. Instead was bitchin' fast and very good choice for systems with little resources. Worked great for me.
• Lindows was always a joke of a Linux distribution. All that debate on "running windows apps capability right out of the box" (aka "we ship our system with wine, but you'll have to configure it by hand and then you'll have to run it by yourself. Cool!") and "click-and-run" system (aka "click-go-to-our-website-buy-pay-download-and-run" - cool acronym.
• QNX was bliss when I first saw a QNX distribution on a single diskette (1.44MB). Way cool! All you had to do is to write the image on a diskette, then boot with it and there you had it: a realtime os, a cool graphical interface, network support, modem support, a browser and few other applications. You had to be impressed! A later version (6.1) wasn't that big of a fuss, because it already diverged so much from the regular Linux distributions that it's about worthless for a simple home/power user.
• I've tested a FreeBSD in 2003 and more recently a 5.3. cool system, an X system that was way faster that anything in that moment
• Knoppix launched a new style: Live Distros. A very cool and practical idea, also reasonably flexible and fast. Tons of packets at a click-of-a-button distance away from you.

Mini-Distros:

• Damn Small Linux (DSL) & QEMU - nice small distro, with lots of packages, and weights less than 64MB (~50). With QEMU you can run Linux in a virtual-machine on top of Windows for example. (to be noted that QEMU supports multiple platforms)
• Shinux - Very cool French distro. The full version is about 154MB large but has very good hardware support and lots of good packets. It's a little bit multimedia oriented but it's a nice little distro for all purposes.

I've tested last month few distributions:

• SuSE 9.3 - At some point tried version 9.1 and was very impressed. 9.3 it's only better. It's solid, has good support (no mp3 support right of the box :( ) for hardware (YaST it's a hell of a application, I tell you that!), lots of good packages and good updates support. This distribution it very polished, even than Mandrake's. Lots of customizations, lots of eye candy, lots of nice little features that make your life easier. Very recommended. Now it's free. OpenSuse it's more like a Fedora distro, and 10.0 it's in my opinion the bleeding edge now.
• Mandriva 2005 LE - I would be absurd to tell you that I've tried them all since 8.0, but I've had my share of Mandrake because it was the best distribution in my opinion: fast, good hardware support, good config tools, lots of polish, good distribution (lots of good packets), good update support and good developer tools. Very recommended.
• Ubuntu 5.04 - I've heard so much about this distro that I had to try it. Ubuntu stands for "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are". It means that this distribution will have the same support for everyone, for free. I've tried it on, but no luck with my video board (ATI 9600XT), no luck with my sound card (Audigy 1), a pretty small installer with little room to chose your packages at the install time... What should I say, I didn't feel too good. It's like you're somehow restricted to use its full power only because lots of people will have a hard time installing a Linux distro (which it's not the case anymore for many assortments of Linux).

I've heard of these distros (which determined me to write this article), and I'm determined to have a look at them in the near future. If you get to play with them, please let me know.

• Elive 0.3 (Enlightment Live) - Looks cool, loved the avi with E17 demo (lots of eye candy)
• Open Solaris - the greatest UNIX that I know of. Now Sun decide that it's wonder baby will be free, for everyone (the x86 version was free since v8.0 but now it's Open Source. Cool!)

Some cool sites that you have to dig for yourselves:

• DistroWatch - the first site regarding Linux distros.
• Linux Planet - good Linux related articles. And something related to my article here.
  
• Linux Magazine - some good articles
  

iPod nano & iTunes 5.0

Hmmm. Jobs gave us iPod, then iPod mini, then iPod Photo then iPod shuffle, now iPod nano. It looks very cool. It's like and shuffle with 1.5" color screen (176x132 px). It comes in two colors: white and black and can now display photos, has a separate podcast section, a stopwatch, a 4 digit password protection. Lasts as long as 14 hours, weights only 42 grams.
Also, iPod mini, has disappeared from apple store... too bad.
Tech specs:

• Holds up to 1,000 songs and full-color album art
• Only 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches and 1.5 ounces
• Bright 1.5-inch color LCD display
• Up to 14 hours of battery life
• Apple Click Wheel
• Charges and syncs via USB
• Accessory-compatible Dock connector
• Completely skip-free playback
• Works with Mac OS X or Windows 2000/XP
• Plays music, podcasts and audiobooks
• Holds up to 25,000 photos
• Syncs contacts, calendars and to-do lists

Comes in two disk sizes: 2GB (199$) and 4GB (249$).

Another news: iTunes 5.0. Don't expect to find major changes, though it looks a little better.

Update:
- How to crack-open your iPod nano (a movie from Kevin Rose - Diggnation)
- Stevie's Little Wonder (article by Time magazine)
- Nono Rocks, ROKR Flops (article by BetaNews)
- iPod nano (stress-testing the nano :) by ArsTechnica)
- iPod nano video review (by CNet)
- inside an iPod nano (gallery by PCWatch)

Podcasts are good for your health :)

I've started listening to podcasts about 3 weeks ago. The first didn't impress me at all, but I've searched better content and I've found some interesting podcasts. Here's a list of what I'm currently watching:

• The Bitterest Pill : comedy : Dan Klass = A professional actor, did a little bit of stand-up comedy and now it's staying home watching his kids, and from time to time takes an audition. Sometimes his 6 year old son, Hudson, comes into show... A podcast about family, life, TV shows casts, etc.
• This Week In Tech (aka TWiT) : technology : Leo Laporte (and the TWiT army: Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak, David Prager, Kevin Rose, etc.) = Fun discutions about technology and this week's tech news
• Diggnation : technology, science, beer, fun stuff : Jay Adelson & Kevin Rose = These two guys launched themselves with "The Broken", nice mini hacking shows, then Kevin worked for Tech TV and for G4TV. Now they launched Revision3 and Digg. All the subjects come from Digg.com, and they're proposed by the readers.
• NOVA : science : NOVA / PBS = Small essays about science (mostly physics) at an intermediate level.

• The HotSpot : games : Rich Gallup, Bob Colayco, GameSpot Staff = Discussions about games and what's happening in the gaming industry. Very good, professional, right to the point news.

Update:
People asked about these podcasts: what are these podcasts? what you can do with them? how you can play them? are they any good?

In my opinion, podcasts resemble with radio shows, only they are posted as an mp3s. A lot like radio on demand. These podcasts are created and then submitted by the author to a podcast directory. Here they became available as episodes, for everyone to download them.

The big difference to radio is that once downloaded, an episode can be listened whenever you want, wherever you want, you can skip through the show and usually there are no ads and no fees whatsoever.

Every podcast has a description, as well as every podcast episode has it's own description. You can "subscribe" to a podcast and the episodes will be automatically downloaded as soon as a new file becomes available on the server. After you've downloaded it, you can listen to it on a computer, you can upload it on your portable mp3 player or you can burn it on a CD and listen to it while you're driving.

Cool huh?

Podcast players:

• iTunes (>=4.9) - has a nice presentation and is really easy to use
  
• Ziepod - somehow good

That's it! Now go fetch your podcasts!

No more Apple mysteries

As you saw in a past article, G5 vs x86, there were few interesting points about G5 and Darwin. In two words: they sucked.
This time, the same guy edited a second part where he revises his previews article in light of new infos and ideas that he confronted in this while, and in few words the article spells: G5 isn't so bad after all (even it's left behind by x86), but Darwin surely sucks.

Google Maps Guestmap Service

I discovered today a new cool & fun way to track my guests: Guestmap
Please sign on my guestmap here: (as a popup window) or (as a standard window)
You can track me in Bucharest, Romania as "Titan" :)

It's offered as a free service by MyGuestmap Team. Try it out for yourself!