newstiger.info

Posts Tagged ‘google’

A blank page can pose an intimidating challenge to a creator; at the same time, a discarded cardboard box can inspire a child to imagine an entire world. it prompted me to wonder: “Why don’t we use similar triggers to spark creative ‘knowledge’ construction by modern learners?”

As outlined in my previous post in preparation for the ABEL Summer Institute, participants in my Creative Commons workshop, were invited to join in the collaborative creation of a field guide. Rather than starting with a blank canvas, I provided the title slide, and invited colleagues to consider the stunning CC licensed photography of Trey Ratcliff (stuckincustoms on Flickr) for inspiration.

After priming the pump for workshop participants, our Google form collected suggestions for using CC in the classroom; questions about creative ownership; and general insights regarding media. the suggestions of teachers have been paired with the images that inspired the contributions, and the resulting work is licensed for further sharing, re-mixing, and knowledge construction.

The parallel goal of the resulting slidedeck, is to inspire educators to consider ways that they might use Creative Commons in the classroom. my hope is that this guidebook will act as a ‘cardboard box’ of sorts, inspiring creative individuals to take flight.

Although the Internet has gained millions of users in the last year, the concern now is for those who still do not access the network and may be excluded from being online benefits such as discounts and special services.

More than 38 million British adults accessing the web, of which 30 million are connected every day. But most of senior citizens, widows and poor have never used the Internet, says the web site of The Telegraph, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the country.

These nine million adults who do not use the internet – about 19% of the population – lost opportunities to save on various products and services – such as cars, holidays and insurance deals – why not use the price comparator, reports Engadget.

Although not a calamity, the fact caught the attention of the government and the British prime minister, David Cameron, said that in the Internet era, we must ensure that people are not left behind, while services and online business becomes.

To alleviate the problem, charities like Age UK created the “Internet Champions,” a group composed of six octogenarians that inspire and motivate older people to take risks in the online world. It’s a smart move as it would be a crime nowadays one does not know the difference between an e-mail and Google, the site says Geeky Gadgets.

Via: Telegraph.

Cisco has expressed interest in buying Skype before the company in its industry leading VoIP start trading shares on the exchange. An acquisition of Skype could either give Cisco a strategic advantage against their competitors or, perhaps, make Cisco a more attractive target for larger companies.

A report by the TechCrunch site claims, based on reliable sources, that Cisco has made an offer to buy Skype before its initial public offering (IPO).

Cisco is a virtual synonym for network hardware, but it also has expanded its business aggressively beyond the routers and switches. Earlier this year the company completed the acquisition of Tandberg to strengthen its position in videoconferencing, and is one of the leading competitors in the arena of unified communications.

Skype – one of the best known brands in VoIP communications – could provide technology and intellectual property of value to Cisco’s strategy. VoIP is the basis of unified communications, and Skype could provide useful tools for Cisco to compete with Microsoft and other rivals in unified communications and avert new rivals like Google – with its Gmail service Google Voice.

Via: TechCrunch.

Google announced last Friday that the Chrome browser will use the hardware acceleration to perform some tasks faster. Thus, the company follows in the footsteps of its rivals, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla, which already use this resource in their browsers Internet Explorer 9, Safari 5.0 and Firefox 4, respectively, with the first and last are still on versions beta.

The browser uses the graphics processor for PCs to run some of its functions. Thus, tasks like video rendering complex 3D objects or will be executed by the GPU, adding speed to the browser.

The functionality of the hardware acceleration will be present in version 7.x of Chromium, the open-source project that provides the underlying technology for Chrome.

According to Google software engineer, Vangelis Kokkevis, hardware acceleration can optimize some graphics tasks, but the essential part of the educational work of text and 2D images will still be charged to the central processor (CPU). “Only the separate parts, also known as ‘layers’ will be processed by the GPU,” he said.

Chrome faces one more challenge in relation to its rivals in time to use hardware acceleration. That’s because one of its security features make it run separate processes, technology known as Sandbox. Once these processes have access to the operating system only in special circumstances, you need to create another process that allows access to the APIs necessary to exploit the hardware.

Via: Read Write Web.

If there is one thing that, Google Inc. is really good at is, to provide its millions of users with surprises and services that are not only extremely interesting, but are also aimed at bringing all communication venues in one place. Two days ago, when Google integrated the Google Voice service into its e-mail service, Gmail, users across the U.S became extremely excited, so much so that in a matter of 24 hours, Google has recorded an astounding more than one million calls via Gmail.

One of the major reasons for the incredible success of this new service is that, Google has combined all forms of Internet communication, mainly e-mail, chatting, video calling and now even Google Voice services into one service, where in the users can access all these features without having to logging on to different websites and by using their singular Google Account. The Gmail calling service allows the users to place calls throughout the U.S and Canada absolutely free of cost and provides extremely inexpensive international calls. This has rung alarms among the major wireless carriers in the United States such as Verizon and AT&T, that provide the users with unlimited voice calling plans for $69.99 a month.

Another factor that might unsettle wireless carriers when compared to the Google services is number of users that both these verticals have. For example, Verizon, the biggest wireless carrier in the U.S has 92 million customers as against the 200 million users enjoyed by Google. This could in turn create quite a competitive atmosphere for Verizon, which would then have to put in everything its got to ensure that, its users do not switch over to Google.

Via Erictric

Two of the foremost and widely used services around the world, Google Voice and Gmail it seems are heading towards an integration, as Google has been reportedly testing out its Google Voice service in its vast and highly popular e-mail service, Gmail. This all new service is expected to enable to the users to launch voice calls, directly from their Gmail inbox, where the contacts will be shown in the Google Chat tab.

Now, Google has announced the successful integration of Google Voice service into Gmail, that would now enable users to make and receives calls directly from their Gmail inboxes and can even receive calls from their very own Google Voice number. With the integration of Google Voice services to the Google e-mail product, the users will now be able to link their Gmail and Google Voice accounts together and would get their Gmail inbox to act as telephone, while they work on their computers. As per Google, the users do necessarily need a Google Voice account to use this service, but the international calls will most definitely be funded through Google Voice accounts.

Quite on the heels of Google Voice tariff model, the calls placed throughout the U.S and Canada re absolutely free of cost and the users will be charged just 2 cents per minute for making calls to countries such as  France and the U.K. Google is introducing this incredibly efficient service for U.S consumers only and has not stated any specific date for an international launch.

According to Google,

“All calls made from Gmail will display your Google Voice phone number as the outbound caller ID and all international calls will use your Google Voice calling credit and are offered at the same low Google Voice rates. We took great care to make sure that our rates are as low as possible. For those of you not as familiar with international calling rates.”

Via Cnet

Google released a new version of YouTube for mobile devices this week. The new proposal is to offer a better user experience when accessing the site on mobile devices, providing better and faster in what is being displayed.

The new version uses the standard HTML 5 to view the videos and, according to Google, offers advanced networking socials that make it easier to share links to services like Twitter and Facebook.

Investment in a new version for mobile devices came from the fact that the number of reproductions of videos coming from these devices has grown 160% in 2009 compared to 2008, and currently there are over 100 million per day reproductions.

The first mobile version of YouTube was launched in 2007 when the internet usage on mobile devices was still something few.

YouTube is a site that allows its users to upload and share digital videos. Founded in February 2005 by three pioneers of PayPal, a famous Internet site linked to management of fund transfer.

YouTube uses Adobe Flash to deliver content. It is the most popular type of site (over 50% market share in 2006) due to possible host any videos (except copyright-protected material, although this material is found in abundance in the system). Hosts a variety of films, music videos and homemade materials. The material found on YouTube can be made available in blogs and personal sites through mechanisms (APIs) developed by the site.

Via: The Inquirer.

Nokia and Intel announced today that its joint-venture software, seen as crucial to the Nokia enhances its leadership position in this market, started solidly.

In February, the two companies announced the plan to create Meego, which would merge the software platform Maemo, Nokia, the Moblin, Intel’s, which is also based on open source software Linux.

Nokia expects Meego’s help in the battle against Apple‘s iPhone, and Android, Google‘s leadership in the mobile phone market.

Nokia still holds 40 percent of the smartphone market in volume terms – with its Symbian software – but lost the lead among the more expensive models for new rivals.

In the middle of last year, Apple surpassed the Finnish company as a manufacturer of mobile phones with higher total profit, while selling just one iPhone for every 13 phones that Nokia sells.

Symbian, Nokia, has not attracted strong support from software developers – which is crucial for the sale of more expensive phones, after Apple and Google started to change the way consumers use their smartphones.

The failure to launch smart phones that provide more generous margins hurts profits and stock price of Nokia in recent years.

Last year, when Nokia and Intel announced their cooperation agreement, also mentioned the possibility of collaborating in the creation of hardware.

Via: Reuters.

When the Internet was young, search engine traffic came at a premium price. Websites could buy their way into search engine listings, but there was no guarantee that the purchase would result in a significant amount of traffic.

Today, the rules are much different. In some ways it’s much easier to get great traffic from search engines, but in other ways it’s even harder. a website has to have a lot of clout before Google or Yahoo will list it in their top returns, but there are many ways to make your site more attractive to the search engines.

If you’re trying to build traffic for a blog, the best thing you can do for increased traffic is to blog and ping. This slightly humorous-sounding term simply means that you let blog directories know each time you make a new blog post.

The search engine then finds other material to index. As you keep getting more links to your blog, the search engine has more pages to index. Eventually you’ll find your blog turning up in searches. You won’t be in the top couple of pages right away, but you will see your search engine traffic rise.

Blog and ping might sound a little complicated, but it’s actually very easy. Most major blog platforms ping the major blog directories automatically. If you want to ping a blog directory that’s not listed in their default list, you can usually add it manually.

What if you don’t actually have a blog yet? well, it’s time to hop on the bandwagon. Blogs are useful for conveying your personal thoughts to anyone and everyone, about whatever subjects you choose. You can keep in touch with far-away relatives or just give yourself a creative outlet.

Lately, though, blogs are used quite often as marketing tools for businesses. the business blog can take many forms, from an informal journal kept by a CEO to a formal, frequently-updated record of new products.

Setting up a new blog is not difficult at all, and you have several options to do it. Most often, new bloggers set up a blog with one of the popular blogging platforms. These platforms offer standard templates, or you can create your own to match your company’s color scheme or your personal preferences.

Once your blog is set up and ready to go, don’t forget to make sure that it pings every blog directory possible. Blogging without pinging the blog directories is like spinning your wheels: you’re doing something, but you’re not making any progress.

If your blogging platform does not support pinging or doesn’t submit to the directories you want, you can use software to accomplish the same thing. It’s available under many different titles, but the basic function is to take your most recent blog post and send it to several blog directories. Your links start building up, your search engine traffic increases, and you are one happy blogger.

As the world of the Internet comes closer and closer to the smartphones market, the concept of online advertising hasn’t been far behind. In fact, advertising is the key to the success of the web on mobile devices and some of the biggest names in the technology realm, Google and Apple Inc. have already got their own advertising networks in the form of AdMob and Quattro Wireless respectively, to serve advertisements on their indigenous smartphones, Google Nexus One and Apple iPhone series.

Now, another major player in the smartphone market, Research in Motion, the creator of the famed, Blackberry, is said to be on the lookout for a mobile advertising network to compete with the relentlessly growing wireless industry. As per sources, RIM had been in talks in Baltimore-based mobile ad network Millennial Media, but the negotiations came to an impasse, due to the differences in ascertaining the value of Millennial Media, where the ad network asked for a sum of $400 to $500 million for the acquisition, which was not acceptable by RIM.

One of the primary reasons for RIM’s decline of the buyout could be the fact that, at the time of acquisition of AdMob and Quattro Wireless, RIM had strongly stated that, both Google and Apple had overpaid for the deal. Even though the Blackberry brand is quite flourishing in the smartphone market, yet RIM has seen a steady decline in its shares, due to the rising popularity of the Apple iOS and the Google Android mobile operating platform.

Via PC World