Archive for the 'Google' Category

Google SketchUp 6 on Windows Vista

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

There’s a new free version of Google SketchUp available, but it doesn’t install on Windows Vista.  Or does it? When you run the setup, it tells you that you’re not using a supported OS, and exits.  No option to install it anyway; it just prevents itself from being installed. Ever-foolish, I configured the SketchUp installer […]

Gmail Spam Failure

Friday, October 27th, 2006

53 new messages in my Inbox this morning, and only 6 of them are not spam.  This is ridiculous.  Here’s the body of one of them (with a bit of editing): babes amazing big boobs get a good tit f**kingblonde teen sucking and f**king in the kitchen How can Google not think this is spam? […]

Google Buying YouTube

Monday, October 9th, 2006

That’s the big news today:  In a stock deal, Google is buying YouTube. A deal like this makes me wonder what Google is really getting out of it.  Another company might be impressed by YouTube’s ability to scale – to deliver video as well as they do – but surely that’s nothing impressive for Google. […]

Media Errors Happen

Monday, September 18th, 2006

It’s true.  Recordable media, like blank CDs and DVDs, aren’t perfect.  Sometimes, a disc is going to exhibit errors while you’re trying to write data to it. What I don’t understand is why developers creating backup software don’t take this common occurrence into consideration when designing their software. I’ve complained about Nero Backup aborting a backup […]

Google Search for Release Date

Sunday, May 21st, 2006

I just discovered another special query that Google uses to return specific information, rather than just general search results:  Release Date. Search for Photoshop CS2 Release Date and Google will clearly tell you that the release date was April 28, 2005.  Windows XP Release Date gets you October 10th, 2005. I use the movie:Pirates of […]

“Convicted Monopolist”

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Google called Microsoft a “convicted monopolist” this week, when talking about how they’re going to fight to prevent Microsoft from abusing their monopoly power when it comes to the default search engine in IE7. This is a bad sign for Google. For one thing, does it really seem anti-competitive for a company to use their […]

Google Calendar, Ottawa Events

Friday, April 14th, 2006

Google Calendar is now in beta (which means it’s released as far as I’m concerned) and they’ve promised an API. The app supports multiple calendars really well, so what I’m thinking of doing is updating the Ottawa Events site code to maintain a calendar with all the events on the site, that users can subscribe […]

Google Mars

Monday, March 13th, 2006

Of course it’s the next logical step after the Moon:  Google Mars.  After zooming in on the moon to see what it’s really made of, I was expecting to find little green men on mars.  But so far, there’s no signs of life. I’m looking forward to Google Stars.  

live.com search: Nice!

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006

Microsoft actually did something rather innovative with the search results from the search on live.com.  Rather than the usual paged results, they give you a scroll bar that works like the zoom slider on their new keyboards – you drag it down and the list starts scrolling down, and keeps on scrolling, using AJAX techniques […]

Google Pages

Thursday, February 23rd, 2006

Another new Google toy:  Google Pages. Looks like a good way for somebody with absolutely no web experience to publish some stuff… And if you’ve got a gmail account, there’s no setting up to do, you just go start editing. Unfortunately since someone got stevex@gmail.com before me, my page has to be at http://xsteve.googlepages.com.  Which […]