I see Chromebook as the evolution of the netbook, its what i believe netbook should have been from the start… The problem now is that Google has made a late entry into the market… With the tablets taking over the vacume that exsisted between the Smart Phones and Laptops, one would consider opting for the lighter tablet… Additionally this is not a device that would take over the laptop as it does not offer any different functionality that you can already achieve with a laptop… The next issue which needs to be pointed out is that it is a web-centric device, so users are required to be constantly connected to the net to achieve its full potential…

Price is also a issue… At $350 to $500 its at a similar price to a full fledged netbook… Now, if the Chromebook was $100, or even $200, it might be easier to make a case for the value it provides… But, the Chromebook is basically a handicapped netbook that costs the same or more than some other netbooks that have much greater capabilities…

Unsurprisingly, the question came up once again at Google I/O last week. During a panel with a bunch of engineers on the Chrome team, it was one of the first questions asked. The response? “It’s not something we’re talking about right now.” Ouch.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” the engineered continued. Okay…

Another team member, probably realizing those answers sounded both cryptic and harsh, chimed in. “The important thing at the end of the day is to make browsers better. While it’s not strictly Chrome, we share a lot of code with the Android team. We’ll share more over time.” Okay, that’s better. Still, a bit odd.

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“Evaluating playlists is hard. However, there is something that we can do that is fairly easy to give us an idea of how well a playlisting engine works compared to others. I call it the WTF test. It is really quite simple. You generate a playlist, and just count the number of head-scratchers in the list. If you look at a song in a playlist and say to yourself ‘How the heck did this song get in this playlist’ you bump the counter for the playlist. The higher the WTF count the worse the playlist. As a first order quality metric, I really like the WTF Test. It is easy to apply, and focuses on a critical aspect of playlist quality. If a playlist is filled with jarring transitions, leaving the listener with iPod whiplash as they are jerked through songs of vastly different styles, it is a bad playlist.”

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A very simple JavaScript i recently found was :

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Just create a new bookmark on your bookmark bar and add the above code…

It’s obvious that it’s kinda hard to get an precise result but that does not mean that the result will be bad but it might be very close… This is very useful with buildings because the large space buildings are covering will help get a very close result…

There is a story on Reuters that Google topples Nokia from smartphones top spot, its has 222 Diggs, and probably same amount of comments like people have no idea that Android is going to be the no.1 in the world… That hype behind the story is totally weird…

I’m not surprised about that because I knew that Android is going to top the world in a short time because it’s a smartphone operating system not entirely a phone which means that any company can take Android and release an endless number of phones with Android and no one can stop them since they ship a good device…

It’s totally different when talk about a single phone shipped from only one company with the same design and features and absolutely the same price… I mean here the legendary Apple’s iPhone… You cannot say that Android is better than the iPhone or the iPhone is better because the experience with Android is with the operating system not the device but with the iPhone you are talking about an experience with software and hardware…

I take car manufacturers as an example, do you see a lot of Ferrari cars in your country??? If yes then which car is better a Ferrari or Suzuki??? my answer is, both are great but the Ferrari is way better, powerful, fast and surely fancy but Suzuki is good too and there is a lot of Suzuki cars with different prices and equipment it’s more affordable than Ferrari… I see the same here with smartphones…

I think that Android is going to be the no.1 platform in the world (If it’s not already) and iPhone, Nokia and BlackBerry will not catch up with Android and they are stupid if they are fighting to gain the lead…

1. Android Marketplace: Google must add a couple of sections like Top Apps, Staff Picked Apps, What’s New and also enhance the update processes to make it compete with the App Store…

2. Touch: There is noway that you can compare an Android phone touchscreen to that of an iPhone… Touch must be improved for sure or at least Google must address the issue if it’s a software or hardware problem…

3. Multitasking: Android multitasking is confusing, that’s because Android keep processes running in the background giving them a short time before killing them based on “You may need this” idea… I think that every Android app must add “Exit” button to the app menu to let users decide either to kill or to keep a particular process running in the background…

4. Networks: One of the annoying issues I was facing with Android is the need to setup the GPRS connection manually because Android do not get the network info automatically… what makes the problem even harder is when I visited the company and they told me that they do not know or support Android yet… The story becomes even worst when you travel, you don’t know how to configure a connection or even the number to call customer support… iPhone handles all GPRS, 3G and cellular data networks automatically…

Android is great, promising and absolutely powerful if and only if they keep enhancing and updating it. Android is good but still need a lot of work and enhancements to go through the same track of iPhone, not to copy it but to provide us better features than the iPhone.

Posted from BlackBerry.

As well all know Relational databases are a pain (you know where)… They force us to twist are object data to fit a particular RDMS (Relational Database Management System)…

Well then why use it??? Why not shift over to a loosely defined class of non-relational data stores that break with a long history of relational databases… These data stores may not require fixed table schemas, usually avoid join operations and typically scale horizontally… Academics and papers typically refer to these databases as structured storage…

Get used to names like Dynomite, CassandraDB, CouchDB, BigTable, MongoDB, Hypertable, SimpleDB, etc… These are all members of NoSQL movement… The movement was started by Google’s BigTable and its clones such as Hypertable (ZVent)… Amazon is doing SimpleDB on Dynamo (not called a database, but a highly available key-value data store)… Facebook is doing CassandraDB… Apache CouchDB is a free, open source, document-oriented database written in Erlang programming language… MongoDB is a collection of JSON documents ( no rows or columns), an open source document-oriented DB written in C++ programming language…

So what is common between all these Databases :

• They can blow through enormous volumes of data. For example, Google’s BigTable with its sister technology MapReduce processes as much as 20 petabytes of data per day… We have not seen this volume in RDBMSs…
• They run on clusters of cheap PC Servers… Google has said that one of BigTable’s bigger clusters manages as much as 6 petabytes of data across thousands of servers… Oracle’s RAC (Rapid Application Cluster) can get there but at a much higher cost.
• They beat performance bottlenecks…  The phrase used here is “eventually consistent”, trading off consistency to maximize availability and scalability…
• While conceding that relational databases offer an unparalleled feature set and a rock-solid reputation for data integrity, NoSQL proponents say this can be too much for their needs… Hence the mantra is “no overkill”…

I think this is exciting development… When people started working on RDBMS, they could not imagine the kind of scalability and data volumes being talked about now… It’s only natural that new approaches must be innovated to handle the demands of the Internet era… Eric Brewer of UC Berkeley floated the idea of this in his research work at least 6-7 years ago…

Although NoSQL movement is not a threat to mainstream database community yet, this may change in next 3-4 years time…

Cheers…

Google today released Translate for Animals on the Android Market, marking the groundbreaking app that finally lets us humans communicate with our two-, three- and four-legged brethren…

The revolutionary applications — which is free, despite the centuries of development time — translates the speech of cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, Guinea pigs, hamsters, tortoises, horses, chickens, sheep, donkeys and pigs. Support for snakes, goats, bison and wildebeests is expected in a future update, slated for sometime in the the second half of 2010…

If you visit Google, they have a video explaining just how the Translate for Animals Android App works…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw[/youtube]

There is also a tour on it…

Google announced in January that Google Docs is able to store any file, whether or not its a document… In addition, the maximum file size was increased to 1 GB… Could it actually get any more amazing than that???

Well now it just did….

Google has just announced that users can store absolutely anything using Google Docs… That’s right, including your car keys, remotes, concert tickets, and anything that you might possibly lose without Google’s help…

Are you moving far away? No problem! Upload your items to Google… Then download them at your new house!!!

What’s really amazing is the price at only 10 cents (USD) per kilogram, which includes free pickup and delivery to and from anywhere on our planet…

From the YouTube Blog:

When we registered the YouTube domain on February 14, 2005, we set out to create a place where anyone with a video camera and an Internet connection could share a story with the world. Five years into it, we’re as committed as ever to the core beliefs and principles that guided YouTube’s creation…

Our goal? To set the standard in online video delivery. Fast loading, high quality videos need to be able to play on any device, anywhere, anytime. And whether we’re supporting 1080p, 3D, or deploying auto-speech recognition technology, we innovate with an eye toward providing the best possible experience for all of you.